Luther Burbank

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LUTHER.BURB4NK

"OUR BELOVftD

Hi^.B'digion of Jlwnariity

BY

FREDERICK W. CLAMPETT

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1926

All rights reserved.

* . - * t

COPYRIGHT, 1926,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped.
Published October, 1926.

PRINTED IN THE WKITED STATES OP AMERICA
BY THE FERRIS PRI^TINCI CQMfANY

763418

To

MY WIFE

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

Luther Burbank has certainly earned a right to speak
to the world, in the name of religion as well as in that
of science.

He has long been a national figure and, in scientific
circles, a world figure.

As a life-long student of science, and as an inde-
pendent thinker, it was natural that an appeal should
be made to him for his views on the relation of science
to religion. His experience has led him far away
from much that now claims as its own the name of
Christianity, but which in his mind has absorbed much
which bears no relation to the teachings of Jesus.
At the same time he cannot conceive that constantly
increasing knowledge of the physical universe stands
in opposition to "pure religion," as shown in lives
made beautiful and sweet by self-devotion and self-
restraint and undefiled by subservience to superstition
and man-made authority.

The only religion which endures must be hand in
hand with that science which also endures.

Luther Burbank was the most noted of all the many
men engaged, the world over, in plant breeding.

In the finest of all arts, the production of useful
and beautiful plants through crossing, selection and
segregation, his work rests on the teachings of Charles
Darwin, tested and verified in the sixty-seven years

7

8 LUTHER BURBANK

since the publication of The Origin of Species by
thousands on thousands of naturalists, Darwin's col-
leagues and disciples.

The conception of organic evolution, or orderly
change in the succession of living beings, demonstrated
by Darwin though not originated by him, is now an
unquestioned part of science, as much so as the theory
of gravitation. All discussion of life problems, from
the generation of amcebse to the development of
human society, must be related to it and more or
less based upon it.

But while no one who has seriously studied the
question of evolution from any angle has any doubts
of the main principle, there is much divergence of opin-
ion as to the relative value of the factors which have
brought about the transmutation of species, and as
to how this relatively new accession of knowledge may
affect the religious feelings of humanity, and especially
the organizations which have grown up around them.
Every new expansion of knowledge has its effect on
the time-honored sanctions upon which organizations
rest or claim to rest.

The result of all observation and experiment is to
show two great basal facts: first, that Nature in all
its ramifications is in process of change; second, that
all change is orderly: nowhere is there disorder or
chaos. Thus everywhere and at all times in the uni-
verse, so far as we know, orderly change is present.
Nature is, therefore, inseparable from it. Thus Ver-
non Kellogg has asserted: "Nature and Evolution are
one and the same thing." As we believe that a cause
stands before every effect, our highest duty in Nature

INTRODUCTORY NOTE 9

is to find out, so far as we can, how her changes are
brought about, then to search out, as well as we can,
the nature and source of the rational order which per-
vades all phenomena. For in the universe, as Huxley
has phrased it, "Nothing endures save the flow of
energy and the rational order which pervades it."

That a rational basis of order exists, few men have
ever questioned. That this is a beneficent personal
intelligence is widely, even generally accepted, even
by those who regard it as unknowable as well as infi-
nite. For with our limitations we are obliged to use
human phraseology, even when we realize that it must
diverge infinitely from the infinite truth itself. Per-
haps no man can wholly escape from some phase of
anthropomorphism. For to the measure of a man,
all that any man can conceive must in some degree
be brought.

The present volume has been prepared as a sum-
mary of Luther Burbank's experiences and beliefs.
His interpreter here is Dr. Frederick W. Clampett, a
friend at once broad-minded and sympathetic. Dr.
Clampett has been for over forty years a clergyman
in the Protestant Episcopal Church, and has been long
honored as one of its wise and liberal representatives.

During the World War he served as Chaplain- of
the 144th Field Artillery (the "Grizzlies") in France,
having received his commission direct from the hands
of the late President Wilson.

He has been a writer on world topics for the past
five years, three of which have been spent in Europe.

DAVID STARR JORDAN
Chancellor, Stanford University

CONTENTS

PAGE

INTRODUCTORY NOTE BY DAVID STARR JORDAN ... 7

AN APPRECIATION 15

LETTER PROM LUTHER BURBANK TO His MOTHER . . 31

A CHALLENGE TO THOUGHT 34

ADDRESS DELIVERED IN THE FIRST CONGREGATIONAL

CHURCH, SAN FRANCISCO 38

THE RESULT OP THE CHALLENGE 42

His RELIGION OF HUMANITY 57

IMMORTALITY 107

SUMMARY 123

SAYINGS OP LUTHER BURBANK 132

EPILOGUE 141

LUTHER BURBANK

AN APPRECIATION

Luther Burbank is perhaps the most widely known
and least understood of modern scientists. This fail-
ure to understand him aright is due to the publication
of many detached fragments of his life which have
been lacking in logical sequence and true proportion.
And those detached fragments confine themselves
almost exclusively to the scientific aspects of his long
and remarkable career.

To know Luther Burbank as he was, from the
human, the scientific and the spiritual sides of his
nature is to become acquainted with one of the most
fascinating personalities of our tunes. It is to re-
ceive a demonstration that his triumph in the realm of
science is more than equaled by his triumph in the
realm of spirit.

His religious experiences and beliefs, as told in these
subsequent pages, will be more clearly understood in
the setting provided by the events that helped to
shape his career, and in the light cast by the slow,
patient methods that marked his pursuit of clues in
science.

My purpose in this preface will be to present in
brief form those hitherto obscured aspects of his char-
acter and in that way strive to depict certain features
of his life unknown to the public that give it sym-

15

16 LUTHER BURBANK

metry. The best means to use in doing this is to
make a composite study of the man, which shall be
the outcome of twenty years of close personal friend-
ship. It is a story, the world will say, of intense human
interest; and one of the highest inspiration, will be
the verdict of the seeker after truth.

His onward march along the tedious, oftentimes
painful, treks of the scientist blazed many a fresh
trail into "the infinite variety and unity of Nature."

Underneath it all, as a foundation that "standeth
sure," is the spiritual man, his "Kingdom within" in
tune with the Infinite.

These two aspects of his character help to explain
his feeling that the creeds enmeshed in superstition
and bigotry occupy the antipodes of the world in
which he dwelt himself, and that the silent growth of
his quite different beliefs was the product of his own
judgment and reason, based on the primal responses
of his being "to the voice within."

On its human side Luther Burbank's life, in its
play with science, presents a study bristling with
romance. Measured by the intenseness of the strain
and the ups and downs fortune played him in his
long-drawn-out struggle against heavy odds, no other
life in the realm of science contains more startling
antitheses.

This thought moved and mastered me as I stood
beside him on the lawn of his Santa Rosa home the
day of the fiftieth anniversary of his life-work in Cali-
fornia.

Who could have believed, that radiant morning,
that this man frolicking on the grass with the light-

AN APPRECIATION 17

heartedness of a child was within close sight of his
seventy-seventh milestone!

Of lithe, spare figure, below the average height, with
mind and muscle striving for added proficiency, the
spirit of youth kindling his eye, pure kindness reflected
in his gentle, genial face, he looked as able as one
of his favorite plants to serve as a living incarna-
tion expressing the truth of selection, heredity and
training.

Luther Burbank in his "seventies" was psychologi-
cally the matured edition that might have been pre-
dicted of young Luther Burbank in his "teens."

The true chronicle of his early life will be of inval-
uable service to the cause of truth both in religion and
science. It will demonstrate that "like produces like"
or near alike. How it will rouse and feed the ambi-
tion of the vast army of our young men and women to
whom the doors of our universities are locked by the
freaks of fortune!

Luther Burbank took greater pride in the days of
his youth than in the days of his greatness. His face
would light up with pleasure as he related how much
March 7, 1849, as the date of his birth, and Lancaster,
Massachusetts, as the place, meant to him that he
happened to be the thirteenth of fifteen children and
didn't care that his mother of ninety-seven years
seems good evidence that maternity must be a friend
of longevity that a blend of English and Scotch in
one's ancestry is worth while that the "human plant
in the cradle" in that Lancaster home was like all other
feeders from the bottle and that it was puritanism in
solution.

18 LUTHER BURBANK

As he sprouted into boyhood, his young mind
received and retained varied impressions from his
environment with almost faultless powers of registra-
tion. Nothing seems to have escaped him; at least,
after sixty years of incredible toil, he could analyze
them one after another with scientific minuteness, as
if they had happened yesterday.

He often spoke of a double inheritance handed down
to him from his father. Thus he explains it: "There
was a certain definiteness about all he did. I learned
that this quality was based on absolute honesty toward
everything met in life." That will explain his atti-
tude toward religion. Not less important was the
second half of this inheritance: "His firm belief in
the power and value of method which exercised no
mean influence upon my life from the start."

To the common schools of Lancaster, Massachu-
setts, and to a local academy, he was sent for the only
classroom education that came into his boyhood life.
Later he was privileged to take a course in medicine.
He was profoundly influenced, in the formative
years of his life, by three men and three books. After
a most careful analysis of the incidents of his boyhood
days, it is my conviction that the secret of his success
can be traced to those influences in combination.

Luther Burbank did not hesitate to attribute the
most powerful of the early formative influences of his
life to his association with an older cousin of his
Professor Levi Burbank, How his views of life were
broadened and his methods of investigation reduced
to a basis of scientific precision will be understood
from his brief summary of the man: "My cousin was

AN APPRECIATION 19

a man of parts. He had a strong bent toward biology,
and he specialized in geology. His knowledge of plant
life was profound. He had a true scientist's mind.
His was strictly the scientific point of view. He
avoided the technicalities of science, preferring to talk
interestingly and simply of the world of Nature all
about us."

For a time his cousin and he lived under the same
roof and a strong and growing bond united them.
Of their daily habits he thus speaks: "He took me
out in the woods and fields and gave me a clear insight
into the life going on in them that is so closely asso-
ciated with ours. It was not alone the actual informa-
tion I thus gamed though this was of the greatest
value but the point of view, the broad grasp of basic
principles which were to him an open book, that hold
their influence over me to this day."

Louis Agassiz (1807-73), professor of natural history
at Harvard, was a close personal friend of Luther's
father. In 1863, when Luther had attained his four-
teenth year and Agassiz was just fifty-six years old,
he formed his acquaintance, so that for ten precious
years he sat at the feet of that great master.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82) was the third of
the group that exercised a powerful influence over his
young life. He recalled with remarkable distinctness,
after the long interval of fifty-five years, many of his
personal conversations with him.

"Three book influences," said Luther Burbank,
"stand out in my life as having influenced greatly my
career."

He was a close reader of the works of Henry David

20 LUTHER BURBANK

Thoreau (1817-62), because he appealed to him as
the "naturalist who saw." In the writings of Friedrich
Alexander Humboldt (1769-1859) he discovered a
world of interest "A wealth of fact, observation,
deduction and comment." Thus he expressed the
nature of his influence over him: "Perhaps the basic
thought I absorbed was the idealistic and intrinsic
worth of the work in which I was later to embark."

It was Charles Darwin (1809-82), however, "the
daring discoverer," who both by his brilliant career
and his published works exerted the most powerful
influence. Burbank found in him his master. Darwin
laid out the way that Burbank trod.

His Animals and Plants under Domestication threw
out a challenge that Burbank heard and accepted.
These are his words: "When, inspired by Darwin, I
began to grasp roughly the principles of variation
that it is possible for man to train and change his
plants so as to meet his needs and desires my career
was fixed my path in life clearly indicated."

As he began to sense the message of that book, a
new light entered his soul which fired his ambition
by imaging before his mind the unborn possibilities
of the laws of variation, hastening the day when he
should experiment with those principles in far-off
California.

Up to this experience, Burbank's life had been
passed in much the same dull monotony as countless
other lives. He had worked in the Ames Plow Factory
at fifty cents a day. Market-gardening and seed rais-
ing in a small way kept him busy and led in 1873 to
the "Burbank potato" as the outcome of planting a

AN APPRECIATION 21

few promising seeds found in a seed boll of the Early
Rose.

Yet there is a vital sense in which those days were
the most important in his entire career. Again and
again did he put the emphasis on this fact with all
the intenseness of his nature. And had he not just
reason?

In those days of priceless value he laid a foundation
of good health, stored his mind with the facts dis-
covered by the world's great naturalists, saw visions
that fired his soul, dreamed of future conquests and
panted for his opportunity. And it came.

The story of Luther Burbank's life as the man of
science is unique in the formidable assembly of
America's self-made great men. Once he trod the soil
of California, the opportunities for plant breeding for
which he had yearned unfolded to his uses with all
the naturalness of one of his own most beautiful roses.
In the course of fifty years, millions on millions of
plants were grown by the deft hands of Luther Bur-
bank. Of these millions, one plant is easily finer than
all the others combined. It is the choicest, the most
prolific, the most admired. It is Luther Burbank him-
self, who, duly transplanted from his native soil of
New England, took deep root in the soil of California
and produced a new and original variety of human
character.

In those fifty years he made history, personal and
scientific, that is only possible in our America. It is
the essence of romance.

In 1875 Luther Burbank entered Santa Rosa, alone
and unknown, with ten dollars, ten potatoes, a few

22 LUTHER BURBANK

choice books, one suit of clothes and a clean bill of
health. In 1926 Luther Burbank owned several experi-
mental tracts, among them one of thirteen acres of
soil, known as the "Sebastopol Farm." In a country
of boundless range like the Golden State, these hold-
ings were, to be sure, mere specks of earth. Yet within
that tiny acreage he so applied to quote the words of
Dr. David Starr Jordan "our knowledge of heredity,
selection and crossing to the development of plants
that he stands unique in the world."

Of no other plot on God's green earth, of no other
man in recorded history can these strong words of
that highly qualified scientist be written. It took a
long time, of course, for him to make this mark upon
the world, so painfully slow to sense genius and so
ungenerously slow to reward it. Not that Burbank
cared. He at last became well known to the world
as well as to men of science as a man "always
interested in the phenomena of Nature and never
seeking fame nor money nor anything else for him-
self."

Through fifty years of slow, tedious, painful climb-
ing his love of science urged him on to the exercise
of infinite patience, until his feet rested on a summit
high above his fondest early hopes.

None will ever know how much Luther Burbank
endured in those early years of California life. Alone
and unaided, he started out in 1875, nursing his dream
children. Penniless, he took the first job that offered
itself, that of cleaning chicken coops. He slept inside
one of them for a time, and was grateful, too, for its

AN APPRECIATION 23

shelter. He knew the pangs of unsatisfied hunger.
When serious sickness came, an old woman tended
him, fed him on milk and saved his life.

There were still long years ahead of waiting, wait-
ing, waiting. Oh, to possess just a few acres in which
he might walk in spirit with Darwin amongst his
plants, selecting, crossing, training! That was the
essence of his dreams; and when that day came and
he began to apply the great lessons of his masters,
by slow degrees there came to fruition in his life the
promise of his early teacher who bade him, "Learn
to labor and to wait."

It takes no less than eight volumes of printed matter
to contain even a summary of the work which he
accomplished. Of the quality of that work, thus speaks
Dr. Hugo De Vries of Amsterdam, Holland, one of
the world's great naturalists: "Luther Burbank was
the greatest breeder of plants the world has ever
known. The magnitude of his work exceeds anything
that was ever done before." At the hour of writing,
there are over six thousand extensive experiments
under way; there are now growing over five thousand
distinct botanical specimens from all parts of the
world; more than a million plants are raised every
year for testing.

No man is more qualified to pass upon the life-work
of Luther Burbank than David Starr Jordan. His
standing in the scientific world, combined with his life-
long intimacy with both Luther Burbank and his
work, renders his criticism of unusual value.

Thus Jordan speaks:

4 LUTHER BURBANK

Burbank's ways are Nature's ways, for Bur-
bank' differs from other men in this, that his whole
life is given to the study of how Nature does
things. His greatest service to science is to show
what can be achieved through deeper knowledge
of things as they are. He has shown the infinite
variety of Nature as exhibited in the varying
life and ways of the millions of kinds of living
things. He has shown the unity of Nature in
again demonstrating the final essential simplicity
of creative processes. He has put into practical
utility the teachings of his great master, Darwin,
and he has enriched the world with thousands of
fruits and flowers, useful and delightful, which but
for him would have existed only among the con-
ceivable possibilities of creation. He has helped
mankind by increasing enormously the economic
values of plant life. He has helped even more
our science and our philosophy by his practical
and successful tests of biologic theories.

Few tributes, as between one scientist and another,
are more accurate in fact and generous in spirit.

When we pass from the things of Nature to the
things of spirit, Luther Burbank admits us, as it were,
into the sanctuary of his being. We become more and
more conscious, as we take up our abode with him,
of his deeply spiritual nature and the supersensitive-
ness of his soul. They form a mirror in which that
popular error assiduously cultivated and circulated
by anti-evolutionists that science is opposed to
religion, suffers complete exposure.

AN APPRECIATION 25

Luther Burbank was equally at home in the king-
dom of Nature and the kingdom of spirit. In a peculiar
degree, he suggested the most perfect balance in his
relation to both. It would be quite as absurd to call
him a "mystic" in respect to his spiritual experiences
as it is to call him a "wizard" in respect to his plant
creations. But I have never known a man who was
so free from rules, traditions and conventional beliefs
and prejudices.

Things that would stagger the average man he took
as a matter of course. Fearlessly he marched forward
in his quest for truth, as if the supreme demand of
things spiritual was whole-hearted response to the pre-
cept: "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good."

A careful study of the following features of his life-
work and character will prepare the way for becoming
rightly acquainted with the strong convictions that
will be found expressed in succeeding pages.

Luther Burbank behaved just as naturally in deal-
ing with the things of spirit as if he were studying
his favorite plants. The impression invariably left
upon my mind, at the end of a religious discussion
with him, was that he looked upon things tangible as
the shadows, and the things unseen as the eternal sub-
stance. Like the child of Nature in the midst of his
plants and flowers, he "lived and moved and had his
being" unafraid in the precincts of the invisible. One
day he said to me with a smile: " 'Tis all so simple."
He made his way about with the same sweetly trustful
spirit in both kingdoms.

His motto was: Omne vivum ex vivo. When I put
the question to him one day: "Can you possibly con-

26 LUTHER BURBANK

ceive of science as the breeder of agnosticism?" his
answer was instant and direct: "No! No! Science is
knowledge arranged and classified according to truth,
facts and the general laws of Nature. Except through
science there is no personal salvation, there is no
national salvation. It is simply a crossing from things
to the essence of things." What could more clearly
demonstrate the simplicity with which the mind of
the great scientist sensed the harmony existing in the
relations between natural law and the spiritual world !

No man in history lived so long with Nature or
gave to the world, as a result of such close companion-
ship, so many rich and varied blessings. For more
than sixty years his mind was concentrated on Nature's
possibilities, intent on learning her secrets. To this
study he brought naturally acute powers of observa-
tion, infinite patience and the most delicate discrimi-
nation in analysis. It can readily be seen how those
qualities would develop and become perfected through
the years. Alone amid the silences of Nature, he
worked over the millions on millions of plants that
passed through his hands. Profitable results of any
kind depended upon an ability to detect in a flash
variations that would pass most observers unnoticed.

Once, in speaking of the effect on things spiritual of
this life-long detective work with plants, he said to me:

My theory of the laws and underlying principles
of plant-creation is in many respects opposed to
the theories of the materialists. I am a sincere
believer in a higher power than man's. Every
atom, every molecule, plant, animal or planet, is

AN APPRECIATION 2?

only an aggregation of organized unit forces,
which, though teeming with inconceivable power,
are held in equilibrium by stronger forces for a
time. All life on our planet is, so to speak, just
on the outer fringe of this infinite ocean of force.
The universe is not half dead, but all alive.

It is not hard to reason that, when a man of native
spiritual power spends a lifetime in such living rela-
tionship with Nature, his insight into the ways of the
Infinite become penetrating and real.

Has he not earned a right to a respectful hearing
when he says: "I prefer and claim the right to worship
the infinite, everlasting, almighty God of this vast
universe as revealed to us gradually, step by step, by
the demonstrable truths of our savior, science."

In his attitude toward things spiritual I have never
been in contact with a man so free from the bondage
of tradition and the blinders of prejudice. He cham-
pioned no system, held himself aloof so as to be free
to pass by all structural theology on the other side and
seek the truth, for truth's sake alone, with all the
single-minded intenseness of his nature.

As delicate in physical build as an orchid, with a
nature ever as sensitive as his plants to light and
warmth, and a face reflecting serenity of mind, he
lived at peace with himself and all the world.

"In how far did his belief express itself and bear
fruit?" is a question often asked of me, and my reply
is definite. For love, for unselfishness, for great serv-
ices to humanity, for kindness, for sweet reasonable-
ness and tolerance, for joyousness of living, for sim-

28 LUTHER BURBANK

plicity, for the splendor of his brilliant physical,
mental and spiritual powers, pureness of life and char-
acter, he stands alone among the many thousands of
other men I have met in a public life of over forty
years.

Luther Burbank's is the one life known to me that
was incomparably in tune with the Infinite.

It was the most natural thing in the world for him
to exclaim: "I love sunshine, the blue sky, trees,
flowers, mountains, green meadows, running brooks,
the ocean waves softly rippling along the sandy beach
or pounding the rocky cliffs with their thunder and
roar, the birds of the field, waterfalls, the rainbow, the
dawn, the noonday and the evening sunset but chil-
dren above them all."

Perhaps no man in our United States of America
received more letters from little children than Luther
Burbank. With the remarkable instinct of divination
given to the child, they sensed and enjoyed his great
love for them. Speaking of the young of the human
species he once said: "The child is the most sensitive
plant on earth; it will respond (by structural changes)
to repetition just as a plant will; once fixed, a quality
of spiritual power and a trait (of character) will stay
with a child for ever."

Hundreds of schools throughout California com-
bined in celebrating Luther Burbank's birthday. And
the children on these occasions repeated the following
standard of their young lives, as prepared by him:

Whom do you love among your schoolmates?
Not those who throw stones at innocent animals;

AN APPRECIATION 29

not those who break and destroy fences, trees and
windows; not those who wish to quarrel and fight;
but you do love and respect those who are kind,
gentle and unselfish the peacemakers.

Weakling cowards boast, swagger and brag; the
brave ones, the good ones are gentle and kind.

Cultivate kind, gentle, loving thoughts toward
every person and animal, and even plants, stars,
oceans, rivers and hills. You will find yourself
growing more happy each day, and with happi-
ness comes health and everything you want.

One is reminded of the language of the apostle:
"Little children, love one another."

Thus greatness and loving gentleness of soul blended
in his capacious nature like the meeting of two oceans.

David Starr Jordan, in his summary of Burbank's
rank in the realm of science, wrote thus of him: "If
his place is outside the temple of science, there are not
many of the rest of us who will be found fit to enter.
... In his own way, Burbank belongs in the class
of Faraday and the long array of self-taught great men
who lived while the universities were spending their
strength on fine points of grammar and hazy concep-
tions of philosophy."

After twenty years of close friendship with Burbank,
during which I was honored with his closest confi-
dence and the open confession of his religious opinions
and beliefs, I can declare with equal confidence: "If
his place is outside the temple of religion there are
not many of the rest of us who will be found fit to
enter. In his own way, Burbank belongs in the long

30 LUTHER BURBANK

array of self-taught great men, who lived while
religious organizations were spending their strength
on fine points of theology and hazy conceptions of
God."

LETTER FROM LUTHER BURBANK TO HIS

MOTHER

WORCESTER, April 25, 1869.
DEAR MOTHER:

I have been to meeting to-day and now have some
spare time to write home. Have we not had two fine
days to-day and yesterday? I have just been out pick-
ing a few flowers, but do not find the familiar may-
flower.

Went to the drawing school yesterday afternoon and
after supper went through the woods to a hill where
all was quiet save the frogs in a distant pond and the
joyous birds. I could see a great distance in every
direction. The sun had just hidden his face beyond
the far-off western horizon whose edges were tinged
with silver and gold. I sat down upon a stump where
the grass was green and enjoyed the pure air and the
beautiful scene around me. Looking toward the south
I could see the city spread before me; in the opposite
direction was grand Wachusett which has about the
same profile as when seen from Lancaster and nearer
by were smaller hills, their sides just beginning to be
clothed in the robe of summer and, between them,
ponds as quiet and smooth as if frozen. It was a beau-
tiful sight I cannot describe it. My thoughts wan-
dered over the past and future of this life which a
bountiful God has given me to enjoy, and I thought:
"Am I growing in anything which is noble, manly,

31

32 LUTHER BURBANK

good or pure, or am I growing more beastly. Oh, is
not life itself a great blessing; each of us poor sinful
human beings have the privilege of elevating, improv-
ing, purifying and fitting for heaven these immortal
minds of ours, or we may make them a thousand times
worse than that of the groveling swine."

I take great pleasure in studying the hundreds of
faces which I meet every day, no two of them look
alike. It is easy to tell the high and the low, the good
and the bad, and generally the rich and the poor; some
of them always look pleasant, pure and happy; others
dirty, mean and miserable.

Monday morning. My string was cut short last
night by seeing that it was time to go to meeting.
Uncle Nelson has been heard from direct in two ways,
he is in Belfast, Maine, with his steamer, the "White
Fawn." Aunt Jane has been up here two or three
times lately. I think she is very well for her. I want
very much to hear from you and Emma this week.
Emma must not wait for Monday to write, but send
me one Wed. too if she can afford it. When I was
sitting on the hill Sat. night I might have said that I
thought of a large brick house with a white Ell, and
the friends thereabout twenty miles away. Hope you
are all well and enjoying yourselves. We have not
been paid off yet. The Co. owe me about $120. Let
Emma write how she likes this mess of mental fodder
and if the rhubarb is up, and if Trip [the dog] is
well, etc.

I hope to hear from you soon. I enjoy reading let-
ters from home pretty well. Yours with love

LUTHER.

LETTER TO HIS MOTHER 33

Monday noon. Joe Stone (the Groton Mill River
Stone) has been in here several days lately at court
he came in to see me last week. Uncle Hiram is in
Maine. Have not heard from Dr. Willis yet. I have
a tooth which ought to be attended to and have half
a mind to come home Saturday night and come in with
you Tuesday, Probate day. Hope to hear from you
this week. With love

LUTHER.

A CHALLENGE TO THOUGHT

In one of his busiest mornings late in the month of
January, 1926, Luther Burbank graciously granted an
interview to a young reporter of a local paper. Out
of the goodness of his heart he dropped his work
amongst his bulbs to do the young man a favor. In
the few minutes available, he was asked for a definite
answer to a question dealing with the subject of
immortality. Burbank, in the course of his reply,
called himself an "infidel." The quick, enterprising
mind of the youth pictured the splendid front-page
headline which that word would make. His vision was
unerring. That ugly word, so suggestive of the lack
of religion, or worse, was tagged to the religious life
of Luther Burbank and flashed across both continent
and ocean. Once in motion it got beyond control, and
in a short time some eight thousand American and
foreign newspapers and magazines strengthened an
alliance between them at once odious and untrue.

It is not difficult to anticipate the inevitable result.
At a season of the year when his work as a naturalist
demanded every moment of his time, he was forced to
undergo the most exciting and harassing experiences
of his entire career. Poor Luther Burbank, who never
injured a fellow mortal in his more than seventy years,
the gentlest, purest, kindliest of men, was made the
object of a narrow, bitter religious war of words. He

34

A CHALLENGE TO THOUGHT 35

who delighted to live a life of ascetic solitude amongst
his plants and flowers was made a public spectacle.
His name was linked with the aggressive unbelief of
Ingersoll, and men and women whispered it in the
same breath with those of Tom Paine and Charles
Bradlaugh. His neat study was turned into a litter
of letters. In his home town of Santa Rosa, this
friend of little children, this champion of the poor and
the afflicted, was pestered by women of the several
evangelical churches, who had formed groups of pray-
ing circles to supplicate their God that He might
grant the deluded and benighted Burbank light,
repentance and forgiveness. His home was besieged
by self-appointed representatives of the "faithful,"
who implored him to recant. The tragedy of Dayton,
Tennessee, was reenacted in Santa Rosa, California.
He who had reveled for sixty years in the silences of
Nature was now compelled to spend his days amid the
angry tumult of incarnated fanaticism. Like Paul of
old, he was to learn what men who "fought with beasts
at Ephesus" felt while the fight was going on. When
we met at that time, the expression which he wore
was that of a man who had been buffeted by "the
petrified hypocrisy" of men and women whose ideas
of religion made it possible for them to bless and curse
in the same breath.

In the midst of that awful experience, many invita-
tions came to him to occupy church pulpits to help
allay the seething feelings of narrow bigots. Finally
he was persuaded to accept one of them from the great-
est Sunday audience that assembles in the city of San
Francisco, and on the last Sunday in January he deliv-

36 LUTHER BURBANK

ered in the First Congregational Church an address
that has since become historic. The seating capacity
of the church is two thousand people, but on that
morning more than twenty-five hundred people lis-
tened to him with breathless attention. In the congre-
gation were bankers, lawyers, merchants, teachers and
representatives of almost every shade of religious
belief known in the cosmopolitan city of San Fran-
cisco, among them hundreds who had perhaps not
attended church service for many years.

We chatted together before the hour of service and
I was conscious of what a nervous strain he was under.
Dr. James L. Gordon, the broad-minded pastor, wel-
comed him in a true, loving spirit, and with spoken
words of strength and tolerance. Just before he rose
I whispered friendly wishes, and he smiled as he turned
to face that vast concourse.

There was something strangely fascinating about
the man as he stood there. His clear, thin voice filled
that vast auditorium. Frail in form, with pale face
and classic head, no man, I will venture to say, ever
stood on that spot whose personality suggested such
startling contrasts. It seemed to me as if a prophet
had sprung to life out of the ages. Knowing his dread
of public functions, his shyness and reserve, I followed
his opening sentences, my own throat tight with mis-
giving. But I was soon made to realize that he more
than measured up to the requirements of the occasion.
As he went on with slow, almost hesitating speech, a
stillness like unto death came over the great audience,
and men and women hung upon every word he uttered
a kind of spell.

A CHALLENGE TO THOUGHT 37

His opening sentence launched out into the deep.
"I love everybody. I love everything. I love espe-
cially to look into the deep, worshipful, liquid eyes of
Bonita, my dog, whose devotion is as profound as life
itself. But better yet, I love to look into the fearless,
honest, trusting eyes of a child who so long has been
said by theologians to be conceived and bom in sin
and pre-damned at birth."

His entire message was pitched in the same keys of
love and joy.

Not in the history of churches in any city of the
Golden State has the scene that followed ever been
paralleled. Hundreds pressed in upon him at the close
of the service and waited patiently for the chance of
grasping his hand and blessing him for his words.
They had proved, indeed, "a challenge to thought for
those who were asleep," and struck some of the divin-
est chords in the strange symphony of life.

LUTHER BURBANK'S ADDRESS

Delivered in the First Congregational Church,
San Francisco

"I love everybody! I love everything! Some
people seem, to make mistakes, but everything and
everybody has something of value to contribute or
they would not be here.

"I love humanity, which has been a constant delight
to me during all my seventy-seven years of life; and
I love flowers, trees, animals and all the works of
Nature as they pass before us in time and space. What
a joy life is when you have made a close working
partnership with Nature, helping her to produce
for the benefit of mankind new forms, colors and
perfumes in flowers which were never known before;
fruits in form, size, color and flavor never before seen
on this globe; and grains of enormously increased pro-
ductiveness, whose fat kernels are filled with more and
better nourishment, a veritable storehouse of perfect
food new food for all the world's untold millions
for all tune to come.

"All things plants, animals and men are already
in eternity traveling across the face of time, whence
we know not, whither who is able to say. Let us have
one world at a time and let us make the journey one

38

LUTHER BURBANK'S ADDRESS 39

of joy to our fellow passengers and just as convenient
and happy for them as we can, and trust the rest as we
trust life.

"Let us read the Bible without the ill-fitting colored
spectacles of theology, just as we read other books,
using our own judgment and reason, listening to the
voice, not to the noisy babble without. Most of us
possess discriminating reasoning powers. Can we use
them or must we be fed by others like babes?

"I love especially to look into the deep, worshipful,
liquid eyes of Bonita, my dog, whose devotion is as
profound and lasting as life itself. But better yet,
I love to look into the fearless, honest, trusting eyes
of a child who so long has been said by theologians
to be conceived and born in sin and pre-damned at
birth. Do you believe all our teachers without ques-
tion? I cannot. We must 'prove all things' and 'hold
fast that which is good.'

"What does the Bible mean when it distinctly says,
'By their fruits ye shall know them'? Works count
far more than words with those who think clearly.

"Euripides long ago said, 'Who dares not speak his
free thought is a slave.' I nominated myself as an
'infidel' as a challenge to thought for those who are
asleep. The word is harmless if properly used. Its
stigma has been heaped upon it by unthinking people
who associate it with the- bogie devil and his malicious
works. The devil has never concerned me, as I have
always used my own conscience, not the dictum of any
cult.

"If my words have awakened thought in narrow
bigots and petrified hypocrites, they will have done

40 LUTHER BURBANK

their appointed work. The universal voice of science
tells us that the consequences fall upon ourselves here
and now, if we misuse this wonderful body, or mind,
or the all-pervading spirit of good. Why not accept
these plain facts and guide our lives accordingly? We
must not be deceived by blind leaders of the blind,
calmly expecting to be 'saved' by anyone except by
the Kingdom within ourselves. The truly honest and
brave ones know that if they are to be saved it must
be by their own efforts. The truth hurts for a while
as do the forceps that remove an old, useless tooth,
but health and happiness may be restored by the pain-
ful removal of the disturbing member.

"My mother, who lived to the ripe old age of ninety-
seven years, used very often in my boyhood and youth-
ful, days to say, 'Luther, I wish you to make this world
a better place to live in than it was before you lived.'
I have unfailingly tried all of my own long life to
live up to this standard. I was not told to believe
this or that or be damned.

"I reiterate: The religion of most people is what
they would like to believe, not what they do believe,
and very few stop to examine its foundation under-
neath. The idea that a good God would send people
to a burning hell is utterly damnable to me the rav-
ings of insanity, superstition gone to seed! I don't
want to have anything to do with such a God. I am
a lover of man and of Christ as a man and his work,
and all things that help humanity; but nevertheless,
just as he was an infidel then, I am an infidel to-day.
I prefer and claim the right to worship the infinite,
everlasting, almighty God of this vast universe as

LUTHER BURBANK'S ADDRESS 41

revealed to us gradually, step by step, by the demon-
strable truths of our savior, science.

"Do you think Christ or Mohammed, Confucius,
Baal or even the gods of ancient mythology are dead?
Not so. Do you think Pericles, Marcus Aurelius,
Moses, Shakespeare, Spinoza, Aristotle, Tolstoi,
Franklin, Emerson are dead? No. Their very per-
sonality lives and will live forever in our lives and
in the lives of all those who will follow us. All of
them are with us to-day. No one lives who is not
influenced, more or less, by these great ones according
to the capacity of the cup of knowledge which they
bring to these ever-flowing fountains to be filled.

"Olive Schreiner says: 'Holiness is an infinite com-
passion for others; greatness is to take the common
things of life, and walk truly among them.

" 'All things on earth have their price; and for truth
we pay the dearest. We barter it for love and sym-
pathy. The road to honor is paved with thorns; but
on the path to truth at every step you set your foot
down on your own heart.

" 'For the little soul that cries aloud for continued
personal existence for itself and its beloved, there is
no help. For the soul which knows itself no more as
a unit, but as a part of the Universal Unity of which
the beloved also is a part, which feels within itself
the throb of the Universal Lifefor that soul there
is no death.' "

THE RESULT OF THE CHALLENGE

Both new and startling were the experiences that
happened to Luther Burbank as the direct result of
his "Challenge to Thought." For the first time in
his long career of fifty years he had entered the realm
of religious discussion, with a statement of his beliefs
delivered with a frankness and precision of thought
characteristic of the man. Viewing the aftermath of
his utterance from the human standpoint alone, it
had all the elements of tragedy. The center of gravity
of his personality was suddenly transferred from the
peace and quietness of his horticultural labors into the
vortex of a religious controversy. No man, in my
experience of forty years of public life, was less fitted
to grapple with such an acute and unforeseen situa-
tion. Gentle, loving, of retiring habits, he had lived
for fifty years in his California home amongst his
plants and flowers, at peace with his God, with him-
self, with all the world. While I was preparing a sketch
of his scientific career during the month of October,
1925, we were brought into close companionship. His
charm as a man of settled calm, of peaceful serenity
of spirit and of joyousness of being was the chief
impression he made upon me. Then at the summit of
his success in the world of science, he bore his honors
with a rare modesty. It is easy of belief that such a
spirit would shrink with horror from the publicity and

42

THE RESULT OF THE CHALLENGE 43

strife of a religious controversy. Nothing could have
been more abhorrent to his kindliness of nature.

His public statement was exploited by the press,
broadcasted by radio, and made the topic of innumer-
able religious discourses throughout the country. The
consequence was a flood of letters and telegrams from
all parts of the world. For many weeks I assisted him
in reading and assorting these thousands of letters.
Science has turned our world into a small family
dwelling place. From Australia and New Zealand
cables were received, requesting permission to pub-
lish his "message."

They were all brought to his study, which was
small and compact, and filled with literature on every
possible subject. On the wall over the bookcase in a
frame hung a poem, in clear, strong print, as follows:

Oft as in solitude and shade I wander,
Through the green aisles, or stretched upon the sod;

Awed by the silence, reverently I ponder
The ways of God.

Your voiceless lips of flowers are preachers,
Each cup a pulpit each leaf a book

Supplying to my fancy numerous teachers,
From lowliest nook.

Floral apostles, that in dewdrop splendor
Weep without woe, and blush without a crime,

may I learn, and ne'er surrender
Your love sublime.

Over Luther Burbank's desk a face looked down
with a massive head and the strong eye of the true
scholarthat of Dr. David Starr Jordan. Once

44 LUTHER BURBANK

BurbanK remarked, as we gazed upon it: "One of
the strongest minds of our nation."

In the days that followed, the floor was piled up
each morning with the incoming mail, like a huge
catch of fish out of the net. Burbank sat in the center
of his study, paper-knife in hand. Each letter was
opened with neatness and minimum effort, glanced
through or read even more carefully, decided upon,
and then returned to its envelope. His face through-
out was a study, and he would often whisper a word
of criticism to me. In the weeks we thus spent to-
gether some nine thousand letters passed through his
hands, letters from every state in the Union, from
Canada, and from greater distances.

It may safely be asserted that their contents struck
every string in the gamut of human nature. It was
hard to conceive that Nature could be so diverse or
religion become so distorted.

Throughout it all the self-control of Luther Bur-
bank was remarkable. There were tunes when I
sensed a disturbed look the expression of a man who
fought hard to master his emotions. He was com-
mended, rebuked, scolded, assailed, chided, praised,
cursed and blessed. And those letters came from every
type of citizen. They were written by presidents of
universities, scientists, clergymen, physicians, lec-
turers, laborers, journalists, cranks, business men,
lawyers, judges, inmates of asylums and young men
and young women, all pouring out their sentiments,
opinions and beliefs with frankness and spontaneity,
moved to do so, some of them, by the spirit of kind-
ness, and others, by a very passion of brutality.

THE RESULT OF THE CHALLENGE 45

Burbank's attitude toward the entire correspond-
ence was marked by the qualities of thoroughness
and patience responsible for his success in the sci-
entific world. There were days when I could have
burnt all the piles of letters in one bonfire, out of a
realization that the strain upon his strength was be-
coming abnormal and that the logical end would be a
disordered nervous condition. No tangible result of
a constructive character could possibly be disen-
tangled from, such a mass of discordant-- elements.
But it was Burbank's firm determination to "see it
through," and he struggled on with a manly fortitude.

Modernists, fundamentalists, agnostics, atheists,
Ethical Culturists, Jews, Catholics, Protestants,
Spiritualists, heretics, Mormons and a score of other
partisans poured out upon his head the convictions
and conclusions of their minds without restraint.

Hundreds of letters from young men and women,
describing their doubts and spiritual struggles and
pleading for light, were read with the utmost care and
laid aside for a personal response. "This is heartbreak-
ing," he would often whisper as he lingered over a
letter, underlining certain passages in it. Many an
appeal brought tears to his eyes, as he confessed his
helplessness. "I'm a member of a club in which every
one of us is a practical unbeliever," wrote a student
of an Eastern college. "Why try to pray when we
don't know whether God is, in this jumble of mis-
beliefs?" was the final sentence of a letter in which a
young man bared the doubts of his soul. A Baptist
minister of Kansas City, who was cast out of his
church for publicly endorsing Burbank's statement of

46 LUTHER BURBANK

belief, wrote to say how he rejoiced at his new freedom
from dogmatic domination and the right he had
asserted to think as his mind and conscience demanded.
From a young man in Virginia, engaged in horticul-
ture, came an appeal that affected Burbank visibly.
In the heart of the country, with few friends, the loss
of his mother had brought the greatest sorrow into
his soul. He wrote: "What does religion offer me in
these days of awful darkness is there a hope that
may sustain me? Is God a reality? I don't know
which way to turn."

In the midst of letters breathing despair a letter of
love and hope would often supply an antidote of the
greatest possible strength and comfort. From Ina
Coolbrith, California's poetess laureate, for example,
came her Songs from the Golden State and the follow-
ing inscription from her pen: "TO OUR 'BELOVED
INFIDEL' LUTHER BURBANK, whose every act through
life has been one Faith. With unfailing faith from
Ina Coolbrith." Many letters came from toilers, con-
taining blunt, frank statements that rejoiced his
heart. "Good luck to you, dear friend Burbank,"
wrote a miner from an Eastern state; "let's have the
truth at all costs. Self and family has quit church
going till a man comes along who will give us a god
of love and forget about hell fire."

Of the hundreds of abusive letters the following two
may be accepted as fitting examples: "Dear Sir: One
Bryan is worth a million Burbanks to any world, and
the Bible will be doing business when you and your
flowers are blowing down the years. Abilene, Kansas."
"Dear Sir : You will be held responsible for your state-

THE RESULT OF THE CHALLENGE 47

ment. You have set aside the Bible, made the God
of the Bible a liar, made Jesus Christ an impostor.
Thus you declare yourself to be a heathen. It is too
bad you have so little sense. Keokuk, Iowa."

Many of the most sympathetic letters were received
from the universities of the land. They were examples
of a breadth of thought that cheered him beyond the.
power of language to describe. His close friendship
for Dr. W. Ray Lyman Wilbur, President of Stanford
University, made the sentiment of the following letter
very real to him: "Dear Mr. Burbank I hope your
usual equanimity is not being disturbed by the
HOWLEKS. Anyone who compels thought as you have
is a real contribution to us all. Faithfully yours."

In the same spirit wrote Mrs. Henrietta B. Lindsey,
in the name of her husband : "Denver. My dear Mr.
Burbank Judge Lindsey is just leaving on an emer-
gency trip. Thanks for your brave attempt to make
people think. Sincerely."

The writer of the following is nationally well known :
"Being an admirer of yours for years past in your
researches and diligence with patience combined, I
cannot help but admire your opinion on the reincarna-
tion and super-existence of Jesus, whom all students
realize was a Jewish student-preacher. The orthodox
Jew does not recognize His divinity, as they have the
history as it transpired, and I am pleased to see that
you, in your wisdom, have the courage to come out
against those who know not."

With a sweet smile, Burbank handed me a letter
from a mother of many children, in which not a word
contained the suggestion of a religious discussion. It

48 LUTHER BURBANK

simply stated that a box, containing choice tidbits for
his dog companion "Bonita" had been shipped, adding
that his loving reference to his dog in his San Francisco
address had touched her heart.

One man, to mark his despair and in mockery of
every semblance of hope, enclosed the following pass-
age from the pen of Lord Balfour: "His [man's] very
existence is an accident; his story a brief and discredit-
able episode in the life of one of the meanest of the
planets." As Burbank put it down, he made the
observation that the writer must have been in very
"poor health."

"Isn't it just splendid to get at the exact truth?"
writes a New Yorker. "The physical strength of a
healthy ape is three times that of a human being, and
the mental strength three times that of an evolu-
tionist."

The longest letters invariably were the letters of
abuse, couched in coarse language. Without exception
they were based on the narrowest interpretation of
religion and filled with biblical quotations. Illiteracy
and bigotry went hand in hand. Texts of Scripture,
full of love, were most incongruously asked to serve
as auxiliaries to sentences of bitter hatred.

Only once, throughout all the weeks we were sift-
ing, reading and arranging this correspondence, did
he seem to be filled with righteous indignation. From
a minister in Pasadena came the following statement,
with its disrespectful form of salutation: "Burbank
Lovers of Christ recently winced and staggered under
the blasphemous attacks made by seventy-seven-year-

THE RESULT OF THE CHALLENGE 49

old Luther Burbank, nationally famous plant wizard.
He declared, among other things, 'Heaven and earth
is a myth and a mockery, despite what the Bible says.
Man needs no Salvation; he is his own Savior.' Mr.
Burbank should stay in his own field, as a horticul-
turist. He is thoroughly at home and probably the
best in the nation. But when he steps into the foreign
(to him) element of theology, he is more ignorant than
the veriest babe in Christ among you ; his teaching on
'Eternal Life' is not even as valuable as John D.
Rockefeller on 'How to Play Football.'

"We ministers do not go into his laboratories and
inform the world that he is in error regarding many of
his findings; and, as he admits he is not a Christian,
he should in all courtesy realize he is out of his realm.

"He has gathered to his banner hundreds of Christ's
enemies, some of whom had been afraid to come out in
the open. Unitarians, scientists, etc., who have always
belittled Christ, are with him. But God is not mocked,
and I tremble for them at the result, while I pity and
pray for the man who is closing a great career as a
poor, deluded dupe of the Devil."

After a long silence, Luther Burbank opened his pri-
vate drawer and, extracting a Bible, handed it to me.
"That," said he, "with the letter that accompanied it,
is the most treasured of anything that came to me as a
result of this whole discussion." It was a family Bible,
an Oxford edition, well worn and marked, with the
clearest of type on "Ceylon paper." The letter was
written by a woman of evident culture, who expressed
her pride in asking his acceptance of the one thing she

50 LUTHER BURBANK

valued most in life and thanked him for his bold stand
for a religion disentangled from the meshes of super-
stition.

Of the communications received by Burbank from
clergymen throughout the country one of those that
seemed most to appeal to him was written by the
pen of Dr. E. Morgan Isaac, a Congregational pastor.
"Luther Burbank," said he, "has declared to the world
that he is religious. He would not so state it, perhaps,
but we have his own word for it. He says, 'I love
everybody. I love everything/ That sounds like the
Man of Galilee. It is the very essence of true religion.
Would to goodness all professed Christians were as
religious as this heretic! The heretic is often the man
who sees the soul of religion and loves that inner king-
dom of power, but cares little or nothing for the
extremes. He has discovered that the essence of
religion is a spiritual atmosphere. It is the attitude
of the soul to the unseen Presence that fills the uni-
verse and that may be seen in all expressions of life.
He finds all theories of religion utterly inadequate to
state the truth indeed they harass his spirit, but he
cannot conceive of the Infinite Beauty of life and love
and power confined to a theological mold or statement
of creed.

"He must have largeness, horizons that ever recede,
life that the mind cannot measure, light that knows no
darkness.

"His love goes out to all life expression for to
him all is beautiful with the very presence of the
Infinite.

THE RESULT OF THE CHALLENGE 51

"Again he says, 'Let us have one world at a time and
let us make the journey one of joy to our fellow passen-
gers, and just as convenient and happy for them as we
can, and trust the rest as we trust life.'

"Luther Burbank has evidently caught some of this
vision. He says: 'I prefer and claim the right to wor-
ship the infinite, everlasting almighty God of this vast
universe as revealed to us gradually, step by step, by
the demonstrable truths of our savior, science.' This
seems shocking to many good people. But why? Be-
cause their thought has been cast in a certain kind of
mold, the outstanding characteristic of which is limita-
tion and fear. They are sure that all of revelation is
in the Bible. The scientist sees an omnipresent God in
Nature, and here the scientist has good company.

" 'Consider the lilies of the field how they grow.
Behold the birds of the air that they sow not, neither
do they reap, nor gather into barns, and your Heavenly
Father feedeth them.'

"To Jesus all life was radiant with the presence of
God every child, every individual, the unfortunate,
the outcast, the despised publican all found in him a
friend. He was a rough-weather friend as well as a
friend of the calm day.

"Burbank would suit Jesus. A church with a thou-
sand Burbanks would be a great church."

An old friend, full of culture and deep religious con-
victions, sent the following acrostic, which Luther Bur-
bank specially requested should be included in this
book of reminiscences of his religious experiences and
beliefs.

52 LUTHER BURBANK

I mmortal words to clarion notes,
N o minor chords of woe;
F ull from the deep of the Great All Source,
I n cleansing waves they flow.
D uty dies, love takes its place;
E ach soul is loosed from sin;

L ife again stands clean and strong in the Temple of God
within.

As the days and weeks passed, it was evident that
the prolonged strain was telling upon him. To be
taken from the open, with its warmth and sunshine,
and forced to live, like a transplanted flower, within
four walls was no ordinary trial to a man of Luther
Burbank's habits.

Yet the physical change was nothing compared with
the mental shock caused by the revelation of broken
hearts, shattered beliefs and disappointed hopes. These
were torment to his spiritual nature. Letters from
young men in heady revolt against "the discovered
deceptions and illusions of superstitions" pained and
upset him greatly. Hundreds of those notes expressed
the anxious desire to learn what the writers might
put in the place of rejected myths which would sat-
isfy their longing. And he felt so utterly helpless.
Frequently he would retire to an adjoining room to
rest upon the sofa. And during those days that the
storm and tempest expressed in these thousands of
communications caused him to tremble as an old oak
of the forest, travelers from all parts of the world were
knocking at his gate to seek an interview.

Before I close this chapter, let me transcribe a memo
from his pen that will be found in a nook at the side
of his desk:

THE RESULT OF THE CHALLENGE 53

How can you expect to have all children reared
in love? By working to that end with vast
patience upon the great body of the people this
great mingling of races to teach such of them as
do not love their children to love them, and to
surround them with all the influence of love. This
will not be universally accomplished to-day or
to-morrow, and it may need centuries; but, if
we are ever to advance in that direction and attain
to this higher race, now is the time to begin the
work this very day. It is the part of every
human being who comprehends the importance of
this attitude toward children to bend all his ener-
gies in its promotion.

LOVE must be the basis of all our work for the
race. Not gush, not mere sentimentality, but
abiding love which outlasts death.

You can never bring up a child to its best estate
without love.

One day, as we rested from our discussions, I took
from the papers on his desk the following statement
from his friend, David Starr Jordan, and read it
to him:

Every robust human life is a life of faith, not
faith in what other men have said or thought or
dreamed of life, or death, or fate; not faith that
some one afar off or long ago held a key to the
riddle of existence, which is not ours to fashion or
to hold; not faith in mystic symbolisms which
only a priest may interpret.

Let us say rather, faith that there is in the

54 LUTHER BURBANK

universe some force or spirit which transcends
humanity, but of which the life of man is part,
not the whole, something which is intensely real
and which it is well for men to recognize, for to
follow its ways brings effort and action, peace and
helpfulness, the sole basis of happiness.

At the close of the reading, he smiled and said:
"Yes! Such a faith belongs to the Religion of Hu-
manity!"

Having shared with Burbank the reading of the
great mass of letters that passed through our hands,
I penned the following impressions one day, and he
was in hearty agreement with me:

. 1. The bitterest letters were written by men and
women who professed to be Christians.

2. The kindest letters were written by scientists
and men and women of university training.

3. The longest letters were written by the illiterate.

4. The shortest letters were written by the cultured.

5. The most hopeful letters were written by men
and women in agreement with the beliefs of Burbank.

6. The most pessimistic letters were written by
fundamentalists.

7. The most abusive letters were written by those
who assured Burbank they were praying for his soul's
welfare.

8. At least eighty per cent of the writers found an
appeal to which they could respond in the spirit of
his message.

Glancing one day over the pages of the "Visitors'

THE RESULT OF THE CHALLENGE 55

'Book," I copied, at haphazard, the following names of
guests at his home. They are interesting, as indicat-
ing the varied type of life that came in contact with
his and broadened his horizon: William Jennings
Bryan, who wrote after his name, "In the home of
one to whom Nature has whispered many of her
secrets"; Jernando Senoza Vivas, Central America;
Arnold E. V. Richardson, Melbourne, Victoria, Aus-
tralia; Herbert Myrick, Springfield, Mass., who wrote,
"What an interpreter you are of Nature's creative
power"; Dr. Victor Reyes, La Paz, Bolivia; J. F.
Ward, President, Department of Agriculture, Tas-
mania; George Edwin Baker, Director General of
Posts, Peking, China; Dr. M. M. Paravians, Switzer-
land; Ed Diaz, Guatemala, Central America; P. J.
Cramer, Buitenzorg, Java; Q. J. Wilansky, Jaffa, Pal-
estine; F. A. Pezet, Lima, Peru; Wadaw Sieroszewski,
Warsaw, Poland; Lydia M. Rogers, London, England.
R. E. Fisher (Major), Matania, Upper Egypt;
R. D. Koch, Capetown, South Africa; A. Sodri, Rio
de Janeiro, Brazil; Samuel Mendelssohn, Jerusalem,
Palestine, who added "Meet me there."

David Starr Jordan of Stanford University, who
wrote, "A perennial joy to see Burbank"; M. Th.
Goethe, nephew of "the Goethe," Geisenheim, Ger-
many; President John H. Wilson of St. Andrews
University, Scotland; Lionel Hanlon, Whangarai, New
Zealand.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox and Robert Wilcox; Profes-
sor J. P. Leotsakos, Lakonia, Greece; J. H. Duyvense,
Jr., Amsterdam; Elinor Glyn, Sheering Harbor, Essex,
who added, "The light that will light the world";

56 LUTHER BURBANK

Carlo Umbrosol, Como, Italy; George W. Oliver,
Washington, D. C.; P. G. Norberg, Goleberg, Sweden.

Dr. Arturo Spozio, Milano, Italy; Carlo Camacho,
Director of Pathological Education, Santiago, Chile;
Pablo Hoffmann, Mexico; James Bryce (Lord Bryce)
of Oriel College, Oxford; E. Marion Bryce; Benjamin
Ide Wheeler, Berkeley; Elbert Hubbard, Alice Hub-
bard, New York City; Dr. Tschemratx, Vienna, Aus-
tria.

John Burroughs, West Point, N. Y.; J. Watase,
Tokyo, Japan; S. Vrooman, Fehoe, India; George
Sterling, who added, "Most great men are doing more
harm than good not you" ; A. Kolpin Rawn, Copen-
hagen, Denmark; Charles Ernest Lofthus, Norway;
James Daly, Board of Agriculture, Dublin; Dionisius
Roodsiuski, Moscow, Russia; F. J. Harper > Platkop,
South Africa; Jose C. Zelston, San Jose, Costa Rica;
Count Ferdinand Nermes, Budapest, Hungary.

Ambassador Juan Vignoli, Montevideo, Uruguay;
Dr. George von Wendt, Finland; J. de Argoleo, Jr.,
Paris, France; Koka Fuur Vaman, Bombay, India;
Veil Savich, Tiflis, Caucasus; Varaji Rajaram, Kol-
hapur, India.

Thomas A. Edison, Henry Ford, Clara J. Ford, Edsel
B. Ford, H. S. Firestone; Opie Read, Chicago; Dr.
J. W. Macfarlane, Pittsburgh. In the midst of his
busiest days, Luther Burbank entertained Mr. and
Mrs. Walter Martin of London, England, who motored
from Los Angeles, Cal., to extend their hearty sym-
pathy with "the spirit of his brave utterance."

SAMPLE OF LUTHER BURBAXKs HANDWRITING.

HIS RELIGION OF HUMANITY

For many years the home of Luther Burbank was
a kind of Mecca to which men and women from all
parts of the globe were attracted. Their visits
were inspired by deep, personal interest in the man,
his life-work and the world-wide fame that his suc-
cess in science had created for him.

Of the hundreds on thousands who have thus made
this pilgrimage, few have left without catching a
modicum of the spirit of love and peace that abided
there. It saturated his personality and grew more
intense with the years.

His home reminded one of the villas nestling in the
slopes of Perugia, that garden spot of Italy. It is
embosomed in a settled serenity, comparable to the
composure accompanying the silent growth of the
plants and flowers.

But this serenity was by no means the offspring of
ease and leisure.

Work to Luther Burbank was prayer in action.
There was not, perhaps, a busier man in the State of
California. The public does not know that in recent
years few men have had better opportunities of study-
ing the human plant in more varied forms. Letters
arrived daily, often in the hundreds, seeking informa-
tion as to his scientific work, his philosophy of life, his

57

58 LUTHER BURBANK

religious opinions and beliefs. There was always a
stream of correspondence, from all parts of the world,
requiring personal attention. Add to those duties the
daily procession of visitors, and his unselfish willing-
ness to meet them whenever possible, and it is plain
to see how that quiet home became, in truth, a very
beehive of industry.

Knowledge of this background is needed to under-
stand the following exchange of letters between two
close and life-long friends.

On September 21, 1925, Thomas A. Edison thus
wrote to him:

Friend Burbank: I hope you are not thinking
of stopping work. It would be dangerous to your
he*alth. In a normal body, not injured by excesses,
the mind is clear and more efficient as age in-
creases, up to the end. I myself am approaching
eighty. My mind is more active than ever. My
body and all its parts are, of course, getting gray-
headed, so to speak. I notice that I am getting
awkward and my hearing is growing poor, but I
still work eighteen hours a day at what I like
and I enjoy it immensely.

Very sincerely yours,

THOS. A. EDISON.

In reply to this youthful and tireless worker,
Burbank answered:

My dear, wonderful Edison: Your kind and
greatly appreciated letter received. The news-

HIS RELIGION OF HUMANITY 59

papers seem to be over-ambitious to place me on
the retired list. No, my dear Mr. Edison, I have
never had a thought of stopping work, have more
interest in my work than ever before, enjoy the
pursuit of knowledge and work better than ever
before. Every muscle in my body is as supple as
ever, but I cannot apply myself to such long hours
of hard physical labor as I used to, but am always
up and at work at 6:30 in the morning. The in-
spiration of the early part of the day is superla-
tive. It is a pity that I cannot dispose of my
Sebastopol place without so much fuss, just to
save time and give a little more attention to my
extremely interesting Santa Rosa experiments.
This, of course, does not require a reply or even to
be read by such a busy man as you are. With
profound admiration, love and esteem for your-
self, and Mrs. Edison, I am always,

Faithfully yours,

LUTHER BTJRBANK.

And the spirit that permeated and controlled this
daily schedule was so compact of living patience and
kindly courtesy that it seemed to inform his body and
mind with the buoyancy of youth.

After her return to her Eastern home, Helen Keller
published a remarkable account of her visit to
Burbank, replete with human interest. This noble
woman, blind and deaf and dumb, related with all the
accuracy of a master mind how she had seen Luther
Burbank, heard his voice and imaged in her mind the
love and gentleness of his personality.

60 LUTHER BURBANK

My experiences in the home of Burbank taught me
how the simple, trustful spirit of an earnest seeker
after truth forms the major part of the equipment of
the truly great scientist. They revealed, as naught
else in a long ministry spent in large cities, how potent
a force for good the spirit of love, of sweet tolerance,
of human sympathy can be recognized to be by all
sorts and conditions of men.

His philosophy of life, his personal opinions and
beliefs on the vital relationship of science to religion,
in which I was privileged to share his deepest convic-
tions, have done more to consolidate my faith than
any other one of the human contacts of my entire
ministry.

His heart and soul were filled with sympathy for
the millions of young men and young women chafing
under the fetters of false tradition, their intelligence
shocked by man-made creeds and false systems of
belief. His one supreme desire was to revive within
them a hope and love crushed by superstitious false-
hoods, and put them in the way of a philosophy of life
that would nourish their lives on the sunshine and joy
of truth.

Only in that light may the opinions and beliefs that
follow be understood aright.

Burbank's choice of the term "infidel," to express
his attitude toward structural theology, aroused an
interest more than nation-wide, confirming his belief
that religion is a most vital force in the lives of the
people. There is a conscious need of spiritual power
to guide and strengthen men and women in an age
of great doubt, of lawlessness and discontent. In the

HIS RELIGION OF HUMANITY 61

light of advanced science, he was convinced that heart
and mind were never more receptive, provided truth
is interpreted in terms of reason. He warned against
forgetting the essential condition in terms of reason.
None knew better than he how foolish it would be
to minimize that yearning after something that will
plant love and hope in the heart. Science, he believed,
has been a mighty force in paving the way for this
reception of a reasonable religious life. Mere ethical
codes have failed; humanity needs a religion to mold
human conduct, draw out the noblest that is in us, and,
above all, bring us into the living consciousness of the
great Creative Force.

In analyzing this great mass of letters and telegrams
from all parts of the world, the deepest impression
made upon Burbank's mind was that structural the-
ology had broken down. The writers of those nine
thousand letters and telegrams from all over the world
told their own story. What a harrowing picture of
doubts, fears and despair they presented on the part
of those who have severed themselves from institu-
tional religion and find themselves adrift like hopeless
castaways! .Men and women want a God as never
before, but not the God falsely interpreted by man-
made theologies. More than eighty per cent of them
turned out to be earnest seekers yearning for a religion
free from the meshes of superstition, worn-out medi-
evalism and false beliefs. Those young men and
women bared their very souls in confession of their
failure to get the slightest comfort or strength or hope
from such a religion, and how they thirsted for a
religion that would satisfy their needs! They prove

62 LUTHER BURBANK

that preserving the integrity of our minds intact is of
infinitely more value than a mere adherence to any
creed or system.

Burbank rejoiced that in his San Francisco address
he had nominated himself an "infidel," as a challenge
to thought for those who are asleep. He said in that
address: "The word is harmless if properly used. Its
stigma has been heaped upon it by unthinking people
who associate it with the bogie devil and his malicious
works. I am a lover of man and of Christ as a man,
and his work, and all things that help humanity ; but
nevertheless, just as he was an infidel then, I am an
infidel to-day." When Christ, he added, dared to face
the false teachers of his day, those self-righteous for-
malists, and exposed their pseudo doctrines and hypoc-
risies, he was denounced by them as an unbeliever.
They gnashed upon him with their teeth. They
accused him of "casting out devils through Beelze-
bub, the prince of devils." They called him a mad-
man. The stigma of infidelism represented only a
part of their bitter hatred. No man in the history
of the world was a greater infidel than Christ
in relation to the errors of the day in which he
lived.

When I pictured to Burbank the great and growing
constituency who are disgusted and bitterly dis-
appointed at the stupid superstitions, the narrow big-
otry and hateful spirit kept alive under the name of
religion, so vigorously championed by fundamentalists,
he said that it was all absurd and illogical and
benighted, that the term itself is a misnomer. Funda-
mentalism, as a word, implies intelligence; whereas it

HIS RELIGION OF HUMANITY 63

is employed to represent organized ignorance. The
so-called fundamentalist flouts the truth of evolution,
attests his belief in the verbal and literal inspiration
of the Bible, blinds his eyes to the frequent errors
of text and alleged fact, proclaims man's total deprav-
ity, insists that he was both conceived and born in
sin, paints a fantastic heaven, consigns the uncon-
verted sinner to a damnable hell-fire of eternal tor-
ment, worships a god of Moloch-attributes and so
on, beginning with the myth of Adam and Eve and
crowning all with the millennium.

While he was on the subject of fundamentalism, I
referred to the late William Jennings Bryan's assumed
leadership of this systematized assault upon intelli-
gence. He quoted in. reply the following from his
Science and Civilization.:

Mr. Bryan was an honored friend of mine, yet
this need not prevent the observation that the
skull with which Nature endowed him visibly
approached the Neanderthal type. Feelings and
the use of gesticulations and words are more
according to the nature of this type than investi-
gations and reflection. Those who would legis-
late against the teaching of evolution should
also legislate against gravity, electricity and the
unreasonable velocity of light, and also should
introduce a clause to prevent the use of the tele-
scope, the microscope and the spectroscope, or
any other instrument of precision which may in
the future be invented, constructed or used for
the discovery of truth.

64 LUTHER BURBANK

He noticed in this mass of correspondence that the
tone of the writers who defended fundamentalism was
the essence of cocksureness. Many had written as if
they were private secretaries to Jehovah. It would
not be possible to overestimate the injury to truth
resulting from their arrogant and bigoted stand against
the facts demonstrated by the progress of science.
He was reminded of the saying of Oliver Wendell
Holmes, who said that "the bigot is like the pupil of
the eye the more light you put upon it the more it
will contract."

I emphasized the widespread revolt of the young,
intelligent minds of our country against the demand,
in the face of the revelation of science, for uncondi-
tional surrender made upon them in the name of blind
faith. My ministry, which has dealt largely with
young men, had convinced me that the bulk of the
thoughtful ones are adrift. They rebel against this
organized assault upon their intelligence. Just as soon
as their studies reach the point that their childhood
faith is shattered and they become convinced that they
have been duped, that fable and fact have been
jumbled together in their early instruction, they
drop out in disgust. Hundreds come to me, in their
distress, asking for help. The situation is heartbreak-
ing. I was convinced that the story of his early experi-
ences and an account of his final ransom from the
shackles of superstition would be of priceless value to
them a source of strength and hope.

Burbank admitted this wholesale withdrawal of
intelligent young men and young women from struc-
tural religion. It was the logical the inevitable

HIS RELIGION OF HUMANITY 65

step. To have been able to help them would have
been the joy of his life. If he found it necessary
more than fifty years ago to take that stand to retain
his self-respect, how much more urgent that necessity
is in this day of illuminating spiritual power and accu-
rate scientific research.

His early religious training was the product of the
false teaching of the day, typical of the New England
religion of the "sixties." As a young member of the
Baptist Church of Lancaster, Massachusetts, his mind
was filled with images of a God that made this world
a dark, forbidding dwelling place. At a time when
religion, which is a sentiment, should have developed
in him a personality of trustful love, God was pictured
as a being of severe, cruel attributes, a stem judge
with the advocate, Jesus, staying the avenging hand.
Fear was used like the lash of a slave-owner to force
people to "Christian living." A hell of eternal torment
was pictured before his young mind. The devil was
imaged, in the language of Peter, to be the dread
adversary, a "roaring lion," walking about seeking
whom he might devour. Human conduct was fash-
ioned on the doctrine of rewards and punishments.
The message of hope might be summed up in the
words, "He that believeth not shall be damned." As
he was conceived and born in sin, the creature of
total depravity, he was encouraged to look upon him-
self as a worm of the dust. It was a religion of cold,
conventional, unloving, selfish spirit. Often his mind
revolted, in its agony of doubt and distrust, for the
entire system appealed to him as an outrage upon
his youth and an absolute falsifying of life-values.

66 LUTHER BURBANK

The one redeeming fact in those days of fog was the
loving, fostering care of his mother, whose spirit
revolted against the puritanic gloom that surrounded
them and permitted him to see another life unfolded
to him by her love. In his seventeenth year came the
first great awakening. Rambling one day in the woods,
his thoughts were centered on the beautiful things
of Nature, abounding on every hand, and the Infinite
Creative Power behind all. As he drank in the beauty
of form and color and fragrance, his mind caught a
vision of the Infinite Being that was in harmony with
the things he beheld in the realm of Nature. Then
there came an ugly, dark cloud that caused the vision
to vanish. It was that cruel, unloving, avenging God
of his church, a thing of awful ugliness. It was all so
hideous, so unreal to his young mind that he rose
from the ground, as if to cast it from him. And when
the cloud disappeared there came another vision
infinitely clearer. He beheld God in the flowers and
in the trees of the forest, in the purple hills beyond.
He was revealed as the true, the only infinite Creative
Force, and as he beheld him so a flood of light came
into his being and an overwhelming joy ineffable pos-
sessed him. Surely, "The invisible things of him from
the creation of the world are clearly seen, being under-
stood by the things that are made." The bare thought
of having such a being imaged before his mind any
longer in terms of unloveliness, of accursed supersti-
tions, of hatred and revenge, caused him to fling the
lying deception from him.

It was the God of love, the God of science that was
opened out invitingly to his young mind. And the

HIS RELIGION OF HUMANITY 67

cruelty, the baseness of defaming such a Being in the
falsehoods of a religious system filled him with shame
and horror. Then it was that he made up his mind
to smash the chains of superstition that bound him,
and assert his freedom from the tyranny of tradition.
A conscious cosmic power possessed him, leaving the
deepest and most abiding impression on his young
life. From that hour, the church had lost its power
over him, and it was lost forever. Sixty years have
passed years that demanded from him the closest,
most patient investigation in the path of science.
These experiences were a power in working out his
philosophy of life. And the closer he was carried into
the secrets of Nature, the nearer he found himself
to the great, almighty Force. He never failed him.
The spirit of life, sunlight and truth crushed within
him the spirit of darkness, superstition and death. It
was his belief that the God within us is the only
available God we know, or can know, and the clear
light of science teaches us that we must be our own
saviors, if we are to be found worth saving; in other
words, we must depend upon the "Kingdom within."
What an experience! What a glorious ransom from
spiritual bondage! And yet thousands on thousands
of young men and women are to-day passing through
the same experience. We were taught in the "eighties"
just what he was taught in the "sixties." When I was
an undergraduate in dear old Trinity College, Dublin,
I was in contact with hundreds of young men who
yearned for a like freedom. We were bound in chains
mightier far in Ireland than those he endured in New
England. Our university professors chafed under the

68 LUTHER BURBANK

dogmatism thrust upon them. The pulpit of our
college chapel was denied John Pentland Mahaffy,
our ablest scholar, for daring to question certain theo-
logical drivel. Professor Lee was threatened with a
heresy trial for denying the verbal inspiration of the
Bible. One day, in our Greek class, Mahaffy turned
from his "Homer" to answer the question of a student
on a matter of ethics, and the talk switched into
religion. Finally he said: "It may not be in my day;
but you, young gentlemen, will live to see a new
religion a religion molded by scholarship and science,
and that day will spell 'doom' for structural theology."
It sounded like a confirmation of Canon Farrar, of the
Church of England, who said: "Science has had a
struggle for life against the fury of theological dog-
matists, but in every instance the dogmatists have
been ignominiously defeated."

Burbank was convinced that day is now here. It
was the dream of his life his constant hope that we
might live to see the KELIGION OF HUMANITY. Yes! it
is now here, he said. He meant the religion of sym-
pathy, kindness, love, peace, harmony and health. It
is the spirit of life, soul-light, not darkness, supersti-
tion and death. Science, he went on, has shown us all
that we know about what we call God there is no
other real knowledge besides; all else is without a
shadow of proof for those who think. As he looked
back upon the events of the last quarter of a century,
he could trace its gradual approach and unfolding. A
new spirit had come into the world, as the evolution
of science. Error is giving way to truth, as evil does

HIS RELIGION OF HUMANITY 69

when overcome with good. There was first needed a
tearing down, before the building up. And the
wreckers of the old musty beliefs and superstitions are
a preparatory part of the very structure. As John
Fiske said: "One and all the orthodox creeds are
crumbling into ruins everywhere. We now witness
the constructive work on a foundation that will endure
through the ages. That foundation is the god of sci-
ence revealed to us in terms that will harmonize with
our intelligence."

The world, he said, is sure to welcome with intense
interest this conception of the basic principles of the
Religion of Humanity. Millions of men and women in
this country, and beyond the seas, are ready for it.
How the writers of those thousands of letters appeal
for more light and the expression for their benefit of
a reasonable faith and hope!

The Religion of Humanity, Burbank felt, will be
founded on belief in one Eternal Energy almighty
and omnipresent. This universe without a God was
incredible to him. Huxley never wrote anything more
logical, in his judgment, than this:

I am utterly unable to conceive the existence
of matter, if there is no mind to feature that
existence. The problem of the ultimate cause of
existence is one which seems to me hopelessly
out of reach of my poor powers. Of all the sense-
less babble, the demonstrations of these philos-
ophers who undertake to tell us all about the
nature of God would be the worst, if they were

70 LUTHER BURBANK

not surpassed by the still greater absurdities of
the philosophers who try to prove that there is
no God.

In reading this statement to me, Burbank accentu-
ated the words: "// they were not surpassed by the
still greater absurdities of the philosophers who try
to prove that there is no God." Take Buddhism, for
example, he exclaimed. While his teaching seemed
to eliminate the idea of a god, his followers, finding
it necessary to worship some god, made a god of
Buddha. This same thing befell the teaching of Zara-
thustra in ancient Persia. Religion cannot be founded
on a principle; it needs the power of an Eternal
Energy, almighty and omnipresent. Burbank had
already made that point clear when he said : "I prefer
and claim the right to worship the infinite, everlasting,
almighty God of this vast universe as revealed to
us gradually, step by step, by the demonstrable truths
of our savior, science."

Yet, in the face of that statement, hundreds
denounced him by letter as an "atheist." It is true
he was an atheist in his utter denial of the God of
the theologians, but that denial makes his faith all
the stronger in the God of science.

One Eternal Energy! One Infinite Spirit! There
will you find the foundation of his faith, the one
Supreme Source of the philosophy of his life. And this
Infinite Energy is the very life of the world, the inspi-
ration of all things created. It is the idea of God, as
revealed to us from the "Kingdom within." God is
immanent, Burbank believed. "In Him we live, and

HIS RELIGION OF HUMANITY 71

move, and have our being." This Infinite Spirit was
to him not a personality living in a distant realm,
enthroned like a king, dispensing His authority. He
is a part of everything created. He is in the plants,
in the flowers, in the stars, in the worlds beyond. He
is the one, supreme, in-dwelling God in our lives.
With this Being it was Burbank's delight to live for
sixty years, in the beauty and silences of Nature. His
immanence was so real to him that he beheld Htm
in the living things of Nature that passed through
his hands. And for him, .this revelation of the
"Kingdom within" destroyed all false conceptions of
God.

The old Hebrew, anthropomorphic conception of the
Deity, he believed, is disappearing, forced out by an
intelligence that brands it puerile and absurd. Man-
made gods, as all religions indicate, were imaged in the
likeness of man. His human virtues and his vices have
been magnified in the nature of the gods. Revenge,
jealousy and all the dark passions have been given
recognition, side by side, with all the manly virtues.
In this way we can understand the Buddha of the Chi-
nese, the Jehovah of the Hebrews, the Ormuzd and
Ahriman of the Persians, the Osiris of the Egyptians,
the Teutates of the Gauls, the Jupiter of the Greeks,
the great Allah of the Mussulman. Each age had its
own god, who rose in quality in man's conception with
the steps of advance of successive ages. God has been
represented in the capacity of King, Man of War,
Judge and Merciless Avenger, ruling his subjects with
an arbitrary spirit. To this method of god-making,
and the tendency of mankind to cling to the ruder

72 LUTHER BURBANK

conceptions, we owe, he maintained, the horrors of
war, perpetuated through the ages.

Burbank was conscious that those dark ages pos-
sessed the beautiful sentiments of the Twenty-third
Psalm and the rapturous music of the great poet
Isaiah! He was cognizant that even the darkest ages
have given to the world fragments of the richness of
that "Kingdom within," which rose high above the sav-
agery and crudeness abounding on every hand. But,
he said, we know that those ages were influenced for
evil by the falseness of the gods thus created. Follow-
ing are the words, from the pen of Camille Flam-
marion, taken from his Dreams of an Astronomer, to
which Burbank once invited me to listen:

The search for the nature of the First Cause
I do not say "the knowledge of God" which would
be an expression worthy a "theologian" and
absurd in itself but simply the search for the
absolute Being, for the origin of the energy which
sustains, animates and governs the universe, for
the intelligent force which acts everywhere and
perpetually through infinity and eternity, and
gives rise to the appearances which strike our
eyes and are studied by our science this search,
I say could not be undertaken nor even prop-
erly conceived before the first discoveries of
astronomy and modern physics. Man has con-
ceived a God in his own likeness. It is in the
name of this pretended God that monarchs and
pontiffs have in all the ages, and under cover of
all religions, bound humanity in a slavery from
which it has not yet freed itself. It is in the

HIS RELIGION OF HUMANITY 73

name of this God who "protects Germany," "pro-
tects England," "protects France," "protects Rus-
sia," "protects Turkey," protects all the divisions
and all the barbarities, that even in our own day
the so-called civilized people of our planet have
been armed in war against each other; like mad
dogs have hurled themselves upon one another
in a conflict over which falsehood and hypocrisy,
seated on the steps of the thrones, figure a "God
of Armies" as presiding, a God who blesses the
daggers and plunges his hands in the smoking
blood of victims to mark the forehead of kings.
It is to this God that altars are raised and Te
Deums are chanted. It is in the names of the
gods of Olympus that the Greeks condemned
Socrates to drink the hemlock; it is in the name
of Jehovah that the high-priests and Pharisees
crucified Jesus. It is in the name of Jesus, him-
self become God, that fanaticism ignominiously
condemned to the stake men like Giordano Bruno,
Vanini, Etienne Dolet, John Huss, Savonarola,
and numerous other heroic victims; that the
Inquisition ordered Galileo to belie his conscience;
that thousands and thousands of unfortunates
accused of witchcraft were burnt alive in popular
ceremonies; it was with the express benediction
of Pope Gregory the Thirteenth that the butchery
of St. Bartholomew drenched Paris in blood.

"Strong words of a great scientist, built on facts!"
Burbank exclaimed.

He felt that to the Hebrews goes the credit of
inventing the conception of our monotheistic Jewish-

74 LUTHER BURBANK

Christian God, who, however, is represented to be jeal-
ous, cruel, vindictive, and to possess most of the weak-
nesses and bad habits of primitive man. When Robert
Ingersoll had the courage to flout the idea of such
a God, he was branded a hardened atheist by the theo-
logical dogmatists. What he did believe may be under-
stood, in Burbank's estimation, from one of his last
utterances: "I belong to the great church that holds
the world within its starlit aisles; that claims the great
and the good of every race and clime; that finds with
joy the grain of gold in every creed, and floods with
light and love the germs of good in every soul."

Over the entrance of such a church, Burbank said,
and it will appeal to vast millions, may be written the
name of the God of science.

He was sure that man, as time goes on, will picture
in his soul God the spirit whose moral attributes tran-
scend to infinity his own highest ideals of goodness.
He will image the Spirit of Light and Love and Truth
an all-loving Being so close to the poorest of his
creatures that no go-between is needed. And as the
"Kingdom within" develops those moral attributes, it
will reveal glimpses into new depths of the eternal
qualities of love, of mercy, of kindness, of peace, of
harmony and health.

For fifty years and more Burbank had lived and
toiled in the deep silences of Nature, amid the lives of
plants and flowers, and had experienced a small share
of what such a Being may be to the sons of men. Such
an Omnipresence needed for him no local habitation,
no magic of sacrament, wherein to reveal himself. His
presence permeates all. Under Jewish teaching, where

HIS RELIGION OF HUMANITY 75

racial religion was supreme, there was a "Holy of
Holies." But in the words of Jesus: "Neither in this
mountain, nor in Jerusalem, shall ye worship the
Father. . . . God is a Spirit, and they that worship
him must worship him in spirit and in truth."

Toward this broader vision of the Eternal Spirit
he was confident the world is fast moving. It has
taken centuries to develop. Every new triumph in the
world of science has hastened the day. The barriers
of man-made creeds will be swept aside as unworthy
and untrue expressions of His Being. The narrowness
of sects, warring one against the other, will be lost in
the revelation of one almighty God dwelling in every
creature. This comprehensive ideal will gather within
its folds the Universal Father, the biological concep-
tion of a vital force, pervading the universe.

This is all expressed in the sayings of the world's
greatest Teacher, of whom Burbank began to talk in
this wise. Jesus stands out, in bold relief, as greatest
amongst the sons of men. The human, historic Jesus
is the supreme fact of all time. This both Jews and
Gentiles alike acknowledge, he declared, and the strong
position concerning him taken recently by Rabbi
Stephen Wise in New York is bold, logical and con-
clusive. Jesus was our world's greatest teacher.
Buddha left many important truths, as did Mohammed
and Confucius; but they cannot compare with the
truths that were taught by the humble Nazarene.
Notwithstanding our altered civilization, our advance
in science and social betterment, his teaching is as real
and natural to our spiritual discernment to-day as it
was when he spoke to that small group of unlearned

76 LUTHER BURBANK

and illiterate men and women by the sea of Galilee.
That fact alone would place him first amongst the
teachers of the world. Truth alone stands the test
of time. Truth alone may be applied to all ages and
conditions. Jesus was an idealist, he reminded me,
and his rules of daily living must always be analyzed
with this fact in mind. Men may mock at the imprac-
ticable nature of his teachings, as an impossible code
to regulate the world of business, of society, of morals;
or they may brand him as "out of date." But they
mock because they want to change his teaching to
suit their mode of living, rather than to change their
mode of living to conform with his teaching. Truth
was imaged on the camera of his mind with a clearness
and finality unique amongst men.

That explained, in Burbank's judgment, the revolt
of all forms of error and falsehood. Jesus came "not
to destroy, but to fulfil." He found that the Jewish
religion had lost its vital spark. All kinds of super-
stition, peculiar to dark ages, had so distorted the
message of the Jehovah that noonday was turned into
night. And as a logical result, his generation became
creatures of the letter that killeth, and lost the spirit
that giveth life. Their desecration of the Temple
typified their utter callousness. As a Jew, his young
life was wholly given up to a merciless exposure of the
rottenness of their system of belief. To Burbank, his
denunciation of the Scribes and Pharisees is the sever-
est arraignment of error and hypocrisy in all history.
Jesus was the infidel of his day and generation. With
petrified hypocrites thirsting for his blood, Calvary
was his inevitable goal, so far was he in advance of

HIS RELIGION OF HUMANITY 77

his time. Nothing in history equals the spirit of
hatred, of bitter enmity that sent him to his death.
Passion so blinded men that they could see in him
no beauty of character. His hatred of organized false-
hood was only equaled by his love of unspoiled human-
ity. No man ever lived who uttered his message with
such naturalness and simplicity. Jesus, of all great
teachers, claimed least for self. Of no one were greater
claims falsely made. His humanness is the jewel of
his soul. He lived a life of poverty, of self-abnegation,
of a vagabond, for "he had not where to lay his head."
He was the friend of publicans and of sinners. He
saw in every man and every woman the best and the
noblest, and inspired them with hope and courage.
His love for little children, for the poor and the
oppressed, for the earnest seeker after truth is unparal-
leled in history. His psychical powers were beyond
the range of calculation. Had he been interpreted
through the ages just as he was, his life amongst men
would harmonize with the truths of advanced science.
The man Jesus lived, Burbank went on, the most
beautiful life in history. The God Jesus, as developed
in subsequent ages by man-made creeds, he said, is a
distortion of the truth of that life. Structural theology
has built up an entirely false interpretation of his
being. Burbank had no hesitation in asserting that the
Christianity of the twentieth century, as framed by
theological dogmatists, is absolutely different from the
simple, direct truths taught by Jesus. His humanity
is merged in doctrines of deification. He who rebuked
a certain ruler for addressing him as "Good Master,"
and added, "Why callest thou me good? there is none

78 LUTHER BURBANK

good but one, that is, God," is now called "Very God of
very God, begotten not made, being of one substance
with the Father." If he were alive in human flesh
to-day, how he would rebuke those makers of idols!
All this is a relic of polytheism.

Burbank loved to think of him as the babe of Beth-
lehem, the child of Nazareth, the son of the carpenter,
the friend of man, the son of God, whose love, gentle-
ness, patience, mercy and spirit of self-sacrifice make
him divine. His reverence and love toward him were
too great to worship him. His incarnation is turned
into mist by the doctrine of the virgin birth, he main-
tained. His ministry has been clouded with the mirac-
ulous. Angels and demons have been invented to
hover around his person. We lose sight of the human
Jesus in the aureole of Deity created by simple-minded'-
followers, magnified by theologians and colored by
artists and poets through the centuries. His person-
ality is lost in the confusion of metaphysics. This will
account for the story of his bodily resurrection, and
his ascension, in bodily form, to take his place at the
right hand of the throne of God. This false conception
of the son of God is the essence of anthropomorphism.

In contrast, the Christ of science will be a potent
force, he predicted, in the Religion of Humanity. He
will be reverenced as first of all the great teachers of
the world. He will be interpreted as he lived and died
amongst men. He will be the greatest personality of
all time in pointing out to man the "Kingdom within."
This is what Burbank meant when he said in his
address: "We must not be deceived by blind leaders
of the blind, calmly expecting to be 'saved' by any one

HIS RELIGION OF HUMANITY 79

except by the Kingdom within ourselves. The truly
honest and brave ones know that if saved it must be
by their own efforts." Amongst the new cults in organ-
ized rebellion against the false conceptions of the
Jesus of the gospel we find Christian Science. The
accession to that cult of so many Jews seemed to him
an indication of the yearning for a reasonable basis
of belief in the ranks of Judaism.

He foretold that millions would hail as reasonable
this attitude in relation to the God whom we love to
call Infinite Spirit. With this monotheistic founda-
tion this Religion of Humanity will re-interpret the
Bible on a basis that will make a similar appeal of
reasonableness to men with a modern training, he
declared. The New Religion will interpret the Bible
.in the light of modern science and scholarship.

As Burbank in his address in San Francisco made
clear, the Bible should be treated with everyday
common sense. "Let us read the Bible," he then said,
"without the ill-fitting colored spectacles of theology,
just as we read other books, using our own judgment
and reason, listening to the voice within, not to the
noisy babble without." Strange to say, in religion
only have men persisted in defending exploded the-
ories. In every branch of science, when facts are
revealed that oppose long-established beliefs, the old
error has to give way to new truth. It was so in the
science of medicine on the discovery of the circulation
disease was radically altered. No medical scientist
. of the blood by Dr. Harvey, when the treatment of
could cling to the old and retain his place as a physi-
cian. It was true of astronomy when the discovery of

80 LUTHER BURBAJNJ1

Galileo swept away the false systems relating to the
universe. It is so in every scientific study.

Burbank was compelled, during his fifty years of
research, to reject many an error in the treatment of
plant life, and his success was largely due, he felt, to
his intuitive insistence in rejecting the false and apply-
ing the true. Science and the God of science are one.
Religion and science owe their life to the same Source.
No one can hope to stop the progress of science any
more than he can the progress of the suns and the stars
in their courses. Yet when we turn to religion we find
a mode of operation in fashion destructive to the truth.
Men of reputed intelligence insist on clinging to false-
hood, in, spite of the positive demonstration of science
to the contrary and the veto pronounced by the critical
research of scholarship.

Take, for example, he said, the story of creation as
contained in the book of Genesis. No scientist would
dare to endorse it as a fact in history. It belongs in
the long list of myths abounding in those books sup-
posed to have been written by Moses. Yet men have
the audacity to face audiences of recognized mentality
with the blatant affirmation that it is one of the great
facts of history. Errors of text, errors of incident,
errors of numerals are constantly to be found through-
out the books that compose the Bible. Fact and
fable are mixed together in bewildering confusion.
Poetry and prose are interpreted as of equal historical
value. A satanic devil is clothed with a personality
expressed in terms as clearly defined as that of
almighty God. Yet in the face of this all too patent
situation, those men, whose vocation implies an intel-

HIS RELIGION OF HUMANITY 81

ligent knowledge of the Bible, cling to the doctrine of
verbal inspiration with the vain notion that the integ-
rity of "the word of God" must be conserved, even
by believing an untruth. This is an assault, he main-
tained, upon intelligence. It is the continued applica-
tion of medieval methods in an age of enlightenment.

Thus may we account for the present tottering state
of structural religion. It is inevitable that every false
claim which the student detects weakens his faith in
the integrity of the Bible. And it likewise weakens
his faith in the integrity of that interpreter. He
reasons that the man, in spite of his profession that
he has been "divinely called/' is either grossly ignorant
or wilfully misleading. If the false claims advanced
by him are the result of ignorance, his right to stand
in the pulpit is questionable; if, on the other hand,
he knowingly insists that falsehood is truth, the integ-
rity of his character is shaken.

If the Religion of Humanity may hope to restore
the faith of the millions who have rejected structural
theology, Burbank once said, the Bible will be accepted
as a part revelation of the God of science. Its influ-
ence through the centuries has been felt in the heart
of all nations. It has been translated into every lan-
guage, and its teachings have molded countless mil-
lions of lives in nobleness of character. Of all books
it is the most sacred and the most precious. We call
it a book, whereas it is a series of revelations from the
crudest ages to the second century of the Christian era.
Its circulation throughout the world is equal to that
of all other books combined. And as the ages roll on,
it will continue to be a mighty force in shaping the

82 LUTHER BURBANK

destiny of men and of nations. No literature in the
world of letters can compare with it. You will search
in vain, he told me, for the poet who can surpass the
Prophet Isaiah. His thoughts have risen to heights
beyond human imagination. The simple beauty of
the sayings of Jesus transcends anything in the world's
religions. But the Bible is only one of the varied
ways in which the Spirit of the Infinite is made
known. He has revealed himself through Confucius,
Mohammed, Buddha and other great leaders, whose
writings have influenced, and still influence, millions
of lives. In revelation, as in all things, the law of
evolution has been at work. Ideas have been trans-
planted from the soil of one religion to that of another,
without an effort to link the sources. Quoting a well-
known scholar, he said: "There is hardly a great or
fruitful idea in the Jewish or Christian system which
has not its analogy in the ancient Egyptian faith."
Out of systems of religion that our so-called Chris-
tian civilization calls "pagan" have been evolved
truths that taught men how to live the noblest type
of life.

The Religion of Humanity, he predicted, will extend
a welcome to the religions of the world whose teach-
ings have inspired men to deeds of love, of mercy, of
service to their fellows. In the light of these facts,
we must share with them the duty of a world salva-
tion. It was a Christian scholar, he cautioned me, who
admitted that "Moslem morality is better than our
own. Islam has abolished drunkenness, gambling and
prostitution the three curses of Christian lands."
Revelation is not static; it is progressive. Yet theo-

HIS RELIGION OF HUMANITY 83

logians will insist in claiming that the Bible is a "final"
revelation. Upon whose authority was the canon of
Scripture closed? Burbank quoted in this connection
his position as set forth in his address: "I prefer and
claim the right to worship the infinite, everlasting,
almighty God of this vast universe as revealed to us
gradually, step by step, by the demonstrable truths of
our savior, science." He is revealed in our own day
with a power greater than that shown in the past, for
the reason that such revelation is made by the sim-
plicity of science, not by the illusion of miracle.
Every fresh conquest in the sphere of science, espe-
cially those that add to the sum of human happiness,
is a revelation confirming the love and almightiness of
God. He is revealed in the modern discoveries of
science that have prolonged human life, lessened
human pain and conquered disease. We have con-
cluded the first quarter of our century with a record
of revelations unique in the history of the world. We
now stand in the dawn of a radiant morn that promises
a flood of light from truth unfolded by the critical
work of scholarship and the fresh discoveries of sci-
ence. And the second quarter of our century, he ven-
tured to predict, will see a still greater revelation.
That precious Book, preserved through the mist of
ages, will be interpreted in the light of the law that
controls the literature of the world. It will reveal
the God of science, stripped of the superstitions that
have made His name grotesque, and present a version
of His character acceptable to an age of enlightenment.
It will dispel the magic of miracle and express the
almightiness of the Infinite Spirit in terms of natural

84 LUTHER BURBANK

law. Sacraments of miraculous conceit will be inter-
preted in their true spirit. Dogmatic arrogancy will
give way to the right of individual variation in belief.
And when that Book is truly understood we are bound
to learn, he emphasized, that religion is as natural to
man and as important to each human being and to
the welfare of society as breathing, but, like love, it
cannot be fully described by any single fact. It is
justice, love, truth, peace and harmony combined a
serene unity at peace with science and the laws of
the universe. The religion of science, ethics, service,
and of love and good will is not indissolubly connected
with obsolete misleading theologies, which bear the
same relation to the essence of true religion that scar-
let fever, mumps and measles do to education. Even
men to-day are far from free. They are still slaves
to war, crime, bigotry and ignorance the only "unpar-
donable sin"; slaves to unnumbered ancient taboos,
superstitions, prejudices and fallacies. But one by one
these are slowly and surely weakening under the clear
light of the morning of science, the savior of mankind.
Science, which has opened our eyes to the vastness
of the universe, has replaced darkness, ignorance, big-
otry and superstition with light, truth and freedom
from fear. Such is the picture he drew of a world in
which the true Savior has been revealed.

On the subject of prayer, Burbank was equally illu-
minating. To him prayer was truly the life of religion.
But the entire conception of prayer, he said, has been
perverted by false, superstitious ideas concerning an
omnipresent God. The reality of prayer depends upon
a truer conception of the Being with whom communion

HIS RELIGION OF HUMANITY 85

is sought. One needs only to think of the many false
ways in which such a God is interpreted. He is pic-
tured as Ruler of the universe, enthroned in heavenly
habitation, dispensing His will as in the early days of
the Hebrew people. He is the "God of Armies." As
such in great crises is he approached and his aid
invoked. Thus, during the World War, ending in
November of 1918, in which the Christian nations
combined to kill off ten million lives of the flower
of the world's manhood, each nation petitioned this
"God of Armies" to direct the instruments of death to
its victory and His eternal glory. No war in history
was waged with more diabolical cruelty. No tortures
in the darkest ages of heathendom could compare with
the fiendishness of the weapons employed and the
awful human destruction involved. Every victory,
with blood-lust fierce as the tiger, was hailed with
national thanksgiving and accepted as direct answer
to the suppliant cries of the people.

He is pictured as the anthropomorphic God, the
superman, who once "walked in the garden in the cool
of the day"; with long, flowing beard, like Michel-
angelo's God in the Sistine Chapel; or like Otricoli's
Roman Jupiter in the Vatican, cringing beggars kneel-
ing before him, craving every form of temporal gift.
Millions of such petitions, including favors as numer-
ous as the stars, are uttered at the same moment of
time.

He is pictured as the God of theology, who presides
over a world into which every child that is born is
the "child of wrath," demanding the cleansing power
of rite or sacrament to save its life from eternal

86 LUTHER BURBANK

destruction. Conceived and born in sin and pre-
damned at birth! And this same God is petitioned to
release from the burning torments of hell, in response
to the appeals of the "faithful," those who have been
there consigned.

Such horrible conceptions of God, he believed, make
communion between the finite and the Infinite impos-
sible. Prayers to such a Deity may float on the
incensed air in tones of celestial music or in the minor
chanting of long-drawn-out litanies, but they reach
only the prescribed area that scientifically regulates
the limit of sound. That there has been a revolt
against those perverted ideas of God is everywhere
apparent. No far-off Ruler, enthroned in majesty and
splendor, no anthropomorphic God, clothed in the gar-
ment of man's imagination, no cruel monster, whose
purpose in creation is fulfilled in destruction, no vin-
dictive God, who takes pleasure in human misery, will
satisfy men to-day. Those false conceptions of the
Deity are doomed in the light of science. Prayer has
become a lost force in the world, not because man
does not feel its need, but simply because he prefers
to retain his manhood by refusal to treat with such
a God. Many of the most uncompromising atheists
in the religion of theology are ardent theists in the
religion of science.

The Religion of Humanity, he thought, will reveal
a God within us as the only companionable God we
can know. " 'Tis life and more of life we want." Life
as we see it around us on this planet is usually thought
to be confined to man, animals and plants, those
organisms which grow and reproduce their kind with

HIS RELIGION OF HUMANITY 87

more or less precision. "Why should we omit crystals,
which grow as truly as plants and reproduce them-
selves quite as precisely true to type, or the more prim-
itive forms of life which are reproduced by division?
Science is proving that the world is not half dead,
but that every atom is all life and motion," were his
words.

Now, as the God of science reveals Himself, we
become conscious of a greater, stronger, more abundant
life, of a spiritual universe rilled with an all-loving,
Spiritual Energy. This spiritual universe is the sub-
stantial, the real, for it nurtures our ideas, our aspira-
tions.

Burbank often said to me that as he wandered
amongst his plants and flowers and watched the grad-
ual unfolding of Nature, his mind entered into cosmic
communion with this inner, spiritual world, of which
Nature is but a passing symbol. And in his cosmic
consciousness, he said, God was within. He manifested
Himself within him, around him. He was a conscious
part of him. Infinitely beyond the power of demon-
stration, He was so real that self was lost in Him.
The God of science is, therefore, all in all, he believed.
If this were a mere passing experience, he said, a tran-
sient thrill of ecstasy, it would leave behind the sus-
picion that it might be only a piece of abnormal
expression. But for fifty years and over he felt the
abiding consciousness of this fellowship, intensified,
as he believed, by the closeness of his life to Nature.
And this uninterrupted fellowship revealed not only
the God of science, but the law of the spiritual uni-
verse. As the result of over fifty years spent in the

88 LUTHER BURBANK

handling of plants, he had been amazed at the accu-
racy of natural law. He never found any calculation,
based on the known laws of Nature, to err. Millions
on millions of plants passed through his hands and
he was struck by this precision. He had never been
disappointed. He was convinced that the same Spirit-
ual Enegry is controlling the spiritual universe. It is
natural law in the spiritual world. Nothing is hap-
hazard. There is no such thing as blind force. One
sublime order pervades this unseen universe, with the
almighty God within and behind all. It is not a God
from the outside, as he explained it, drawn toward
him by the appeal of his inner being, but rather the
God rising within him, producing an overwhelming
consciousness of the Infinite. In the conscious pres-
ence of this Power will be found the sources of the
religious life. It cultivates, as nothing else can, the
sentiment of awe and reverence, the love of goodness
and beauty, all the tender pure passions of Nature.
In the failure to grasp this truth may be found the
prevailing perversion of prayer.

Is it strange, then, that prayer should have appealed
to him as a force, absolutely independent of the human
voice? To the omnipresent Spirit the only language
that is real is the language of action. Because such
a Being is approachable and this mode of approach
is as natural as the attitude of a child toward its
mother, the Religion of Humanity will appeal to intel-
ligence. And therein lies the sole basis of happiness.
It is enough to know that man's life, man's sphere,
man's destiny are in the keeping of such a Power.
He was sure that no human relation could ever draw

HIS RELIGION OF HUMANITY 89

the lives of earnest men and women into a bond so
sacred and serene. It brings effort and action, peace
and helpfulness.

The consciousness of such a bond impels the mind
of reason to revolt against the degraded habits of
prayer so common in structural religion. Noisy beg-
gars, he called them, with clamorous petitions, address
themselves to the Deity with an air of vulgar assur-
ance. They utter words, words, words, with a "Coue"
contempt for meaning and purpose, believing "they
will be heard for their much speaking." For such a
spirit of a mutilated religion did the prophet of old
express his contempt, when he mocked the prophets
of Baal and said: "Cry aloud: for he is a god; either
he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey,
or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked."
Men who thus interpret the omnipresent God miss
the source of truth. And the loss is beyond calcula-
tion. Scientifically accepted, he believed, there are
hidden powers capable of being developed in this
spiritual fellowship that surpass the comprehension of
mind. They account for the force of personality, of
self-control, of renewed strength, of the great love
toward our fellow man expressed in the joy of service
for their good, for the calm assurance that this omni-
present God is all-love and all-truth. A terrible load
of responsibility rests upon the heads of those who
hold earnest lives back from the supreme privilege of
communing with God by presenting to them distorted
Deities before whom they refuse to kneel.

Burbank was a sincere admirer of George Eliot, and
once read to me a letter written by her to Harriet

90 LUTHER BURBANK

Beecher Stowe, dated May 6, 1869, which gives expres-
sion to these sentiments:

I believe that religion has to be modified
"developed," according to the dominant phrase
and that a religion more perfect than any yet
prevalent must express less care for personal con-
solation, and a more deeply awing sense of respon-
sibility to man, springing from sympathy with
that which of all things is most certainly known
to us, the difficulty of the human lot. I do not
find my temple in Pantheism, which, whatever
might be its value speculatively, could not yield
a practical religion, since it is an attempt to look
at the universe from the outside of our relations
to it [that universe] as human beings. As
healthy, sane human beings, we must love and
hate love what is good for mankind, hate what
is evil for mankind.

Here now we come, he commented, to the great
dividing line that separates the old from the new
religion. With her keen spiritual insight and high
moral courage, George Eliot expresses it in matchless
form: "A religion more perfect than any yet prevalent
must express less care for personal consolation, and
a more deeply awing sense of responsibility to man,
springing from sympathy with that which of all things
is most certainly known to us, the difficulty of the
human lot." He tried to give utterance to much the
same thought in his address in San Francisco: "Let
us have one world at a time and let us make the
journey one of joy to our fellow passengers and just

HIS RELIGION OF HUMANITY 91

as convenient and happy for them as we can, and
trust the rest as we trust life."

Institutional religion is divided, it seemed to him,
in interest between two worlds, with over-attention
to the hereafter. As David Starr Jordan well said:
"To live in two worlds at once is to unfit oneself for
life in any world." It is true that in proportion as
men have dwelt in the hereafter they have neglected
the here-and-now. It is simply impossible that people
should be absorbingly interested in a personal and
selfish fashion in the hereafter, and at the same time
be interested, in a noble and humane way, in the life
that now is. This is seen in the effect which this
attitude produced upon the lives of the first disciples
in the Christian faith. Their intense interest in the
future life caused them to be indifferent to the present
and made of them poor citizens. How could it be other-
wise? They looked for a hasty and sudden end during
their lifetime to things earthly, and their absorption
in what they called the "second coming" left them no
inspiration to better human conditions. Paul was
compelled to write to one church to calm the fears of
the disciples over the expected cataclysm and to assure
them there was no immediate danger. These early
Christians had a magnified self-interest in the future
life. Present conditions were lost sight of in the atten-
tion given to future glory or punishment. Religious
revivals in days past reflect this same attitude.
Preachers played on the emotion of their hearers by
painting a fantastic heaven with the brush of Sweden-
borg, and a hell with the carmine of Dante.

On the other hand, he thought that there had been

92 LUTHER BURBANK

a complete reversal in recent decades in the human
outlook upon life. No longer is man thrilled by the
rapturous vision of a future heaven nor terrified by
the dread descriptions of a future hell. Both have had
their day creations of dark, noisome superstition. In
the light of science the glorious present is all impor-
tant; the Oriental imagery of the future belongs to
fable. Heaven and hell are here and now. As Milton
said: "The mind is its own place and in itself can
make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven." "Let us have
one world at a time." In the face of a structural
religion that brings to mind empty churches and tens
of millions of men and women who have no desire
for it, there is a challenge going forth from the
Religion of Humanity that will meet with a universal
response. It will evoke that response because it will
appeal to the noblest, the best that is in them. It will
see in all men some good the real capable of being
developed to unlimited power. It will fit men and
women for their true place in life and never fail to
give the helping hand. It was this thought, he felt,
that captured the imagination of George Eliot and
filled her mind with a new vision. To see in all men
some good means that the inspiration has been found
to help them.

With his plants, Luther Burbank always started
with sound, wholesome life and worked upon that as
a sure foundation. Theology starts out wrong. To
brand an innocent babe born into this world without
its own volition as the child of wrath and, as it grows
into maturity, to add the damnable doctrine of total
depravity is an awful crime against humanity. If he

HIS RELIGION OF HUMANITY 93

dared to treat his plants as religionists treat the moral
being, he said, he would have been the greatest failure
in the long list of scientists. It would be like casting
a blight upon their young plant lives before the first
experiment was tried. Human plants are more sensi-
tive and respond even more rapidly to proper treat-
ment. A religion founded on an abiding faith in the
love of the everlasting God of this universe is the great
need of humanity. This will be the supreme test.
"Pure religion and undefiled" applies a spark to our
better impulses, and directs their forces into channels
of human betterment.

Fired by the consciousness of man's true place in
the world and directed for his good, the New Religion
will summon into active play great stores of human
energies now latent. Glittering generalities will give
place to personal forces hard at work. The words
"service for others," for example, will acquire a new
meaning. Love will be its inspiring power and unself-
ishness its very soul. During the past fifty years, the
greatest movements for the uplift of humanity have
sprung from sources outside the churches. Religion,
as interpreted by our race, has developed the sentiment
of self-interest. Men are asked to choose between the
alternatives offered by a God with heaven in the one
hand and hell in the other. With such a God the
average man of self-respect wants to have nothing to
do. No religion based on selfishness can survive.
Pure religion consists of active philanthropy and per-
sonal holiness. Religion is real when man, under the
power of its influence, loses himself in the good of his
fellow man. That was the secret in the life of the man

94 LUTHER BURBANK

of Galilee, who "went about doing good." Renuncia-
tion was the law of Christ. If men would dwell less
on the miracles which an age of magic attributed to
Jesus and dwell more on that greatest of all miracles,
his life of absolute self-abnegation in an age of utter
selfishness, his true place in the world would be
restored.

The Religion of Humanity, Burbank predicted, will
be a living challenge to do and to serve; man striving
to help his fellow man, inspired by the thought of his
greater welfare and happiness. Our world is under-
going a gradual preparation for the universal reception
of such a religion. Herein science and religion are
working together. Science, by reason of her modern
discoveries, has made of this world one large family.
Nations are like next-door neighbors. Our doings are
flashed in a few seconds to the ends of the earth. Time
and space have been annihilated by miracles of sci-
ence, greater far than the age of magic and ignorance
could have invented. Human knowledge has advanced
with marvelous strides. The hundreds of millions who
have turned from all structural religion, as commonly
presented to them, are ready to examine a religion
that may suggest a reasonable belief and hope. The
state of moral and financial bankruptcy in which the
nations of Europe emerged from the World War
emphasized the need of spiritual realities. There was
an absolute reversal of truth. Peace gave way to the
sword, good will to hatred, spiritual ideals to material
passions. We were taught our lesson, and the Religion
of Humanity will establish personal service for others
on the foundation of love. It has been a long step

HIS RELIGION OF HUMANITY 95

between the "traces of altruism appearing even in
animals of a single cell" to the present spirit of altru-
ism as exhibited between man and man.

Here, once more, science and religion are working
in harmony. Modern miracles in the sphere of med-
ical science, founded on reason, have surpassed the
greatest miracles of theology, founded on fancy. Our
century registers hundreds of such miracles, working
for the good of humanity. Through their influence,
suffering and pain are lessened, new hope is inspired
and the measure and happiness of the human span of
life increased. Think of the blessings, he said, be-
stowed upon humanity by the life-work of scientists,
such as our Dr. Crawford Long, discoverer of ether,
Koch of Germany, Lister of England, and Pasteur of
France. Men and women of the type of Pierre and
Madame Curie, who, after a life-consecration, gave to
the world their discoveries of radium and polonium,
are worthy of saintship in the Religion of Humanity.
Think of the number of scientists who have willingly
yielded their lives in experimental tests of new dis-
coveries for the conquest of disease! If this spirit of
altruism filled the world men would no longer specu-
late, but would know what is meant by "the new
heaven and the new earth." Such a conception of
service, applied with universal intentness, would turn
this world from a desert into a garden. Nor must we
forget, he cautioned, that we are only at the threshold
of this new conception of service. It will not be long
before the two great plagues of humanity, tuberculosis
and cancer, with their excruciating suffering, are con-
quered by the researches of science. Miracles per-

96 LUTHER BURBANK

formed by religionists of the first century are said to
have restored individuals to health. Miracles per-
formed by scientists of the twentieth century restore
hundreds of thousands. Here may we find the source
of that richer, fuller, more abundant life that is the
essence of religion.

But, in some respects, greater than all in its promise
is that re-directed energy, in this life of service, now
being felt in the world. We are in a position to ap-
proach crime, poverty, ignorance and human misery
from a new angle. Religions of the past were directly
responsible for the false methods used in their day.
Whereas, through ignorance the supreme effort then
was to cure, from this day forward the supreme aim
will be to prevent. Under the past-and-gone system,
encouraged by theological falsehoods, the stages of a
criminal's career .were marked by a dense stupidity
almost impossible to conceive. He was born the "child
of wrath" and neglected in his formative years of boy-
hood, thereby becoming the logical vehicle of crime
and the victim of the penitentiary. When he had
reached his cell he was so far recognized as to be
included in the prayers of "the faithful" who peti-
tioned for his redemption. What can be expected
when two of the great Christian denominations say
that from birth he was "dead in sin, wholly defiled in
all the faculties and parts of soul and body, and
therefore bound over to the wrath of God"! The
blight which a false theology thus casts upon life is
destructive from the start. But such damnable errors
are being crushed.

Our New Religion, in his view, will enunciate the

HIS RELIGION OF HUMANITY 97

non-reality of evil in comparison with the infinite real-
ity of good. It will behold in the child the human
plant that may bud and blossom in a garden teeming
with the sanctity of life. Here, once more, will be
found the harmonious working of science and religion,
both making, like good partners, for the same results.

In Burbank's book, Training of the Human Plant,
he said that all animal life is sensitive to environ-
ment, but of all living things the child is the most
sensitive. Surroundings act upon it as the outside
world acts upon the plate of the camera. Every pos-
sible influence to which it is subject will leave its
impress upon the child, and in many cases the traits
which it inherited will become to a certain extent even
more pronounced than as given in heredity. The child
is like a cut diamond, its many facets receiving sharp,
clear impressions not possible to a pebble with this
difference, however, that the change wrought in the
child from the influences without becomes constitu-
tional and ingrained. A child absorbs environment.
It is the most susceptible thing in the world to influ-
ence, and if that force be applied rightly and con-
stantly when the child is in its most receptive condi-
tion, the effect will be pronounced, immediate and
permanent. As science and religion combine to bring
the law of prevention into the life of the young human
plant, the new methods of service will be unfolded.

And love, he believed, will be the cornerstone of the
temple. Burbank's whole philosophy of life was built
on love as the foundation. It is the supreme force
that puts man in tune with the Infinite, he said. No
religion can survive without it. Creeds are cold, often

98 LUTHER BURBANK

senseless, confessions of faith. Forms and ceremonies
are mere outer garments, too often falsely colored.
Love is truly the greatest thing in the world. Nothing
in all the universe can take the place of that passion
of the soul, glowing with human affection. It springs
from the "Kingdom within." It was love that made
the Christ-character unique in history. He, of all
great teachers of the world, was the living incarnation
of the purest, sweetest, divinest love. Other great
religious teachers, like Buddha, inspired their follow-
ers with the imperishable force and beauty of this
attribute. But the man Jesus, in his life of love,
compassion, pity and sympathy, is the most human
figure of the ages. Love is the essence of true religion.
Science is infinitely accurate, but cold; even as
philosophy is subtle and colorless. We find in religion
the source and strength of the noblest sentiments, fired
by love; and sentiment rules the world.

That is the story told by those thousands of letters
that littered the floor of Burbank's study. Take
passages like these, culled from those letters, so spon-
taneous and appealing: "Give me just one word of
loving hope." "My soul thirsts for some living force
that may lift me out of my trouble." "Is there a God
worth while?" "If you can find time, do drop me a
line and tell me the secret of your peace and happi-
ness." "My four sons are a blessing to my mother-
heart, but they laugh at the churches." "If God is
love, why so much hatred in the ranks of the clergy."
"Ten of us fellows have turned against this make-
believe religion, forced on us at our college." "We cry
for a reasonable faith."

HIS RELIGION OF HUMANITY 99

While men and women young and old were
uttering this cry of human distress, yearning for a mes-
sage of love, we find some one hundred and eighty
religious sects warring over trifles and abusing one
another in language of bitterness. Thoughtful minds
refuse to accept a belief that lacks the spirit of love.
The Religion of Humanity will have for its supreme
test love to God, and love to fellow man. As J. Arthur
Thomson has said : "This world is not the abode of the
strong alone ; it is also the home of the loving." Love
as the foundation of religion recalls the strong words
of the apostle of love in the New Testament, where he
submits the same test in the form of a question: "For
he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen,
how can he love God whom he hath not seen?"

So far we have given Burbank's views on the great
constructive forces on which the New Religion will be
built. What will be its attitude toward the many
superstitions that have dominated structural religion?
In his "Challenge to Thought," Burbank took a bold
stand in relation to the ancient belief in evil spirits,
saying: "I nominated myself as an 'infidel' as a
challenge to thought for those who are asleep. The
word is harmless if properly used. Its stigma has
been heaped upon it by unthinking people who asso-
ciate it with the bogie devil and his malicious works.
The devil has never concerned me, as I have always
used my own conscience, not the dictum of any cult."
That story of the devil and his spiritual cohorts has
long been relegated to the place in history allotted to
^Esop's fables. Structural religion has used Satan and
his host, like the banshees of Celtic creation, as so

100 LUTHER BURBANK

many instruments of mental torture. However, it
serves a useful purpose in revealing the insidious ways
in which gross superstitions retain their foothold.
Satan is the bugaboo of a false dogmatism long since
exploded, but retained in religious systems as an in-
strument of fear. Jewish religious thought, in its
primitive phase, influenced by the Persian, gave it a
place in the dualistic system, representing the King-
dom of God in antagonism with the kingdom of the
devil. Upon this mythical misconception the theory
of redemption was constructed. No man of average
intelligence in this age of enlightenment is deluded by
such absurd myths. Satan and his host of evil spirits
are rejected by modern Judaism as played-out actors
in life's drama. Modernists of the Christian faith are
no less positive in their attitude.

The insistence on the part of the literalists in Bible
exposition upon the existence of a personal devil has
done much to lead thoughtful people to turn a deaf
ear to the appeals of structural religion. The Bible,
he was convinced, must be read, as we read all other
books, in the light of our judgment and reason. In
this way only may we account for the stories of Satan
and his host of evil spirits. The writers of the four
Gospels have portrayed their Master in the accepted
superstitions of their day. Thus may we account for
the story of the "demoniac possessions," the tempta-
tion by the devil in the wilderness, the story of the
Gadarene swine and numerous other myths evolved
from beliefs in magic and witchcraft. When we
remember that in the seventeenth century "the
majority of educated men still believed in witch-

HIS RELIGION OF HUMANITY 101

craft," as Mr. Buckle states, and that at the close of
that century "it flourished with fearful vigor in Massa-
chusetts," as affirmed by Lecky, the historian, we may
well understand that ignorance and superstition
abounded in the beginning of the Christian era. In
the light of science, even as we have rejected the
absurd belief in witchcraft, we are forced to reject
those stories as related in the New Testament. If
Jesus or any other of the world's older religious teach-
ers lived in our day, Satan could have no place in their
teaching.

There are millions of souls in our land, outside the
pale of any church, who cannot be persuaded to wor-
ship a God whose attributes of infinite love and mercy
are proclaimed in the same breath with the doctrine
of eternal torment. Since the days of Jonathan
Edwards and Charles Spurgeon, who preached a brim-
stone hell of eternal punishment, a great change has
been in process in the attitude of the churches. That
change has found one of its ablest champions in the
late Dean Farrar, of London, in his writings on
"Eternal Hope." In Burbank's address in San
Francisco, his language left no doubt as to his personal
belief. Here are his words: "The idea that a good
God would send people to a burning hell is utterly
damnable to me. The ravings of insanity! Supersti-
tion gone to seed! I don't want to have anything to
do with such a God." Structural religion has been
trying to explain this accursed superstition and make
it harmonize with a God of love. Its direct conse-
quences, altogether apart from the religious life, have
been disastrous. In the words of Lecky, he believed

102 LUTHER BURBANK

that "The doctrine of a material hell in its effect was
to chill and deaden the sympathies, predispose men
to inflict suffering, and to retard the march of civiliza-
tion." How can the leaders of a religion, he asked,
denounce wars on the ground of cruelty when the faith
they proclaim assigns to eternal perdition innocent
children conceived and born in sin, because the sprink-
ling of water on their persons has been neglected?
How could such a God reign and be at home in heaven,
conscious of the billions of souls crying in vain for a
drop of water to relieve their terrible tortures? No!
the penalty for wrong-doing is now and within us.
The Religion of Humanity will proclaim a hell here
and now, "not in future flames of sulphur in some
far-off prison." This position is endorsed by the mod-
ernist leaders of institutional Christianity. On the
other hand, those who are ardent believers in a ma-
terial hell refer to the teachings of Jesus as the source
of their conviction.

The opposite position, however, is the only logical
conclusion to draw from the teachings of Jesus, which,
rightfully treated, Burbank thought, admit only of a
spiritual interpretation. It was this same material
conception that led to his rejection and crucifixion. It
is the material interpretation that crucifies him afresh.
No great teacher of a world religion laid greater stress
on the present, and less stress on the future life. His
life and teaching enriched the idea of the abundant
life, as lived here and now. Poets like Milton and
Dante have created by their imagination a heaven and
a hell, in relation to which Jesus was absolutely silent.
His message emphasized God's love, expressed in terms

HIS RELIGION OF HUMANITY 103

of truth. Institutional Christianity, as the advocate
of eternal torment, magnifies God's justice, in terms
of falsehood. No reasonable mind would care to enter
into communion with a Being who condemned the
mass of mankind to endless perdition and pain. What-
ever power an institutional system may have attained
by insisting on such a state, and by claiming the power
of deliverance therefrom, has been won at an awful
cost. Millions of people agree that it belongs to the
ravings of insanity.

The philosophy of life as interpreted by Jesus,
Burbank proclaimed, is utterly opposed to this hor-
rible doctrine. Reading the story of his ministry, no
reasonable mind can accept any saying, alleged to
have been uttered by him, that is not in perfect
harmony with the weight of his message in reveal-
ing the infinite love and compassion of Almighty
God.

Some of his correspondents were interested to learn
what stand the Religion of Humanity will take in rela-
tion to the doctrine of expiatory sacrifice. Burbank's
answer was that no such doctrine belongs to a religion
that will proclaim a God of infinite love. It is un-
worthy our idea of the Creative Being, revealed
through our savior, science. In all primitive religions
craven fear was the inspiring spirit of sacrificial acts,
either propitiatory or expiatory. The lower the social
caste, the more horrible was the nature of the sacrifice.
It passed from older forms into the Hebrew concep-
tion of religion. This false and unworthy conception
has maintained a foothold in many forms of modern
structural Christianity. God is looked upon as a stern

104 LUTHER BURBANK

judge, demanding the payment of penalty for sin
committed or yet to be committed. This payment is
made by faith in the vicarious shedding of blood, which
remits the penalty and stays the avenging hand. The
ransomed sinner suddenly experiences a conversion,
and is given the assurance of a future paradise, as he
turns from his satiated sensuality or depleted selfish
living. Such a doctrine is an appeal to the individual,
based on his personal safety or welfare. It is sub-
versive of the whole idea of character and rectitude,
rationally considered.

The Religion of Humanity, he believed, will reject
such a scheme of salvation and substitute therefor a
salvation based on self-reformation and self-sacrifice
in the beauty and nobleness of service to fellow man.
A God of infinite love calls for no higher atonement
than that of a life attuned to Him by love and personal
devotion. Thousands of letters received from all parts
of the world in response to his "Challenge to Thought"
were heartily in accord with this rational interpreta-
tion of religious belief.

On the subject of belief in miracles as recorded, for
example, in the New Testament, Burbank's idea was
that faith in miracles found a congenial soil in the
gross superstitions of an age in which magic and witch-
craft, diabolical possessions and diabolical diseases
were universally accepted as fact. In this age of ad-
vanced science, such claims form one of the great
stumbling blocks to the reasonable acceptance of the
Christian faith. They belonged to an age that referred
every problem to the realm of the supernatural. We
live in an age in which the natural is dominant. The

HIS RELIGION OF HUMANITY 105

historian, William Lecky, in his Rationalism in Europe,
states what he had in mind, he said, with remarkable
accuracy. Thus he writes:

When it began, Christianity was regarded as a
system entirely beyond the range and scope of
human reason : it was impious to question ; it was
impious to examine; it was impious to discrim-
inate. On the other hand, it was visibly instinct
with the supernatural. Miracles of every order
and degree of magnitude were flashing forth in-
cessantly from all its parts. They excited no
scepticism and no surprise. The miraculous ele-
ment pervaded all literature, explained all diffi-
culties, consecrated all doctrines. Every unusual
phenomenon was immediately referred to a super-
natural agency, not because there was a passion
for the improbable, but because such an explana-
tion seemed far more simple and easy of belief
than the obscure theories of science. In the pres-
ent day Christianity is regarded as a system which
courts the strictest investigation, and which,
among many other functions, was designed to
vivify and stimulate all the energies of man. The
idea of the miraculous, which a superficial ob-
server might have deemed its most prominent
characteristic, has been driven from almost all
its entrenchments, and now quivers faintly and
feebly through the mists of eighteen hundred
years.

In this age of miracles performed by science in
conformity with the laws of Nature, there is no room

106 LUTHER BURBANK

for credence in the story of alleged miracles per-
formed by magic in an age of dark superstition.

The Religion of Humanity will be a natural religion.
It will be a positive, spiritual power to humanity. It
will draw within its fold vast numbers of intelligent
minds that have been forced to reject the teachings,
steeped in superstition, of all structural religion. It
will be a unifying force. The weakness of existing
systems of institutional Christianity lies in the un-
happy divisions, the bitter dissensions that stultify
and destroy.

The New Religion will offer a common ground for
all earnest seekers after truth who demand a reason-
able interpretation of its mission and office, based on
the discoveries of science. There will be a new sense
of personal freedom, begotten of accepted truth, un-
tainted by an arrogant dogmatism. It will be hailed
with joy by the millions of young minds who are to-day
uninfluenced by institutional religion.

For fifty years and over this was the foundation
of Burbank's philosophy of life. During all those
years, his faith in the infinite, everlasting, almighty
God never failed him. He was his closest friend in
the loneliness of his life-work, amid the silence of
Nature. Often must he have worked amongst his
plants till darkness intervened, knowing something of
the feelings of the astronomer who gave expression to
his experience in the words: "In the deep and silent
night everything moves driven by the breath of God."
The Religion of Humanity will draw mankind into the
beauty and conscious strength of His infinite presence.

IMMORTALITY

In no phase of his religious belief is Luther Burbank
less understood and more inaccurately reported than
that pertaining to the subject of personal immortality.
His persistent silence in the midst of the angry con-
troversy resulting from his public "Challenge to
Thought" exaggerated the misunderstanding. It re-
vealed a striking contrast between the man and his
critics. While Luther Burbank was laying stress on
the power of religious belief in molding human con-
duct and developing the more abundant life here and
now, his critics were chiefly concerned in demanding
from him a statement that would throw light on his
personal attitude toward belief in a future state. It
so happened about that time that a statement by
Henry Ford on the doctrine of reincarnation was pub-
lished by the daily papers, and widely exploited from
the pulpits of the land. A reporter, whose spirit of
enterprise exceeded his religious knowledge or accu-
racy of expression, was responsible for an article in
which Burbank was made the victim of gross mis-
quotation relative to that doctrine. We were constant
companions in those days, and I am in a position to
affirm that Burbank had strictly adhered to the un-
broken silence that marked his attitude throughout.
Now this negative position on his part was a stand
true to type. His Scotch-English ancestry, accentu-

107

108 LUTHER BURBANK

ated by his New England birth and training, helps to
explain the habitual reserve that formed a striking
trait in his character. He had to be driven into the
open. Often he asserted, in my presence, that his
right to his personal belief was sacred, and not sub-
ject to the blatant challenge of fiery and obtrusive
religionists. When they publicly interpreted his
silence as conclusive evidence of his "atheistic ten-
dencies," he realized the nature of the influences that
were arrayed against him. As a matter of fact,
Burbank seldom discussed the subject, and then only
in the presence of his closest friends. Thus we find, in
his "Challenge to Thought," that the matter of immor-
tality is only briefly referred to in the form of a quo-
tation from the pen of Olive Schreiner.

This silence on the part of Burbank had a deeper
source. He did not hesitate to affirm that the subject
of immortality occupied a secondary place in his
religious beliefs. My first prolonged conversation with
him on that subject took place during a trip in 1913
through the Northwest and British Columbia, when
we were close companions. He was then in his sixty-
fourth year, in splendid physical and mental form, and
refreshingly wholesome in his outlook upon life. He
was delightfully frank with me, expressing his opin-
ions and convictions with freedom, as he discussed
the many honest doubts that confronted him in striv-
ing to answer that vital question, as old as the book
of Job: "If a man die, shall he live again?"

In February and March, 1926, we went over prac-
tically the same ground again, and I realized that my

IMMORTALITY 109

companion of 1913 was passing through the same expe-
riences, except that a greater strength of conviction
and warmth of feeling had developed during the in-
terval of thirteen years.

One day I recall having read quite slowly to him a
striking passage from the "Conclusions" by William
James in his Varieties of Religious Experience, as
follows:

Religion, in fact, for the great majority of our
race means Immortality, and nothing else. God
is the producer of Immortality; and whoever has
doubts of Immortality is written down as an
atheist without farther trial. I have said noth-
ing in my lectures [the Gifford Lectures] about
Immortality or the beliefs therein, for to me it
seems a secondary point. If our ideas are only
cared for in "Eternity," I do not see why we
might not be willing to resign their care to other
hands than ours.

The moment I had finished reading, Burbank spoke
with a force of conviction that left a deep impression
in my life, because he was so unlike the great mass of
believers with whom I came in contact in the course
of my ministry. He said: "Yes, my dear friend, Pro-
fessor James has shown remarkable discernment in his
position relative to personal immortality, and it is in
perfect harmony with both fact and reason. The
true goal is missed by the multitude of religionists,
because of the abnormal degree of their self-interest.
They seem to be blind or indifferent to the fact that

110 LUTHER BURBANK

our chief concern is life precious life here and now.
This life is the great adventure. It is the immortal
present. To love, even as God would have us love;
to be true, for truth's sake; to do, for humanity's sake;
to suffer, for duty's sake; to live in the ever-conscious
sanctity of life, to plunge into its floodtide, inspired
and fortified by those ideals, and take the chance
boldly and without concern as to the realities of a
future heaven or a future hell that's LIVING! What
shall a man give in exchange for such a life!"

I will venture to amrm that no man ever uttered a
belief gave expression to an ideal with a heart and
soul more powerfully attuned to the Infinite Spirit
than did Luther Burbank that day. He unconsciously
laid bare the secret springs of his life and daily con-
duct.

Only in the light of the foregoing facts may we
hope adequately to appreciate Burbank's intimate
sentiments on the subject of immortality that follow.
They open out a vision of universal interest. Nor
must it be forgotten that they reveal in a very vital
sense the basic qualities of the man. Of all men whose
religious beliefs have come under my personal study
during long years of ministry, no man appealed to
me whose attitude toward the subject of personal im-
mortality was marked by a greater desire to eliminate
all consideration of self-interest.

With a deep sense of responsibility as his chosen
interpreter with the supreme desire to pursue his
path of thought with unerring accuracy, I will now
attempt to give an insight into his sentiments on
immortality.

IMMORTALITY 111

FIRST PHASE

Perhaps no man of modern thought has given the
world such a vivid picture of the conflicting doubts and
yearnings of the soul as the mind dwelt upon death,
and the probabilities of existence after death, as did
Thomas Carlyle. One day, moved by the desire to lead
up to a discussion on the subject of the future life, I
said to Burbank: "Let me read to you a remarkable
record taken from the Journal of Thomas Carlyle,
written by him at his home, 24 Cheyne Row, Chelsea,
London, and dated October 14, 1869" :

*Fhree nights ago, stepping out after midnight,
with my final pipe, and looking up into the stars
which were clear and numerous, it struck me with
a strange new kind of feeling, "Hah, in a little
while I shall have seen you also for the last time.
God Almighty's own Theatre of Immensity, the
Infinite made palpable and visible to me; that also
will be closed, flung-to in my face, and I shall
never behold that either any more. And I knew
so little of it: real as was my effort and desire to
know!" The thought of this eternal deprivation
(even of this, tho' this is such a nothing in com-
parison!) was sad and painful to me: and then
a second feeling rose on me, "What is Omnipo-
tence, that has developed in me these pieties,
these reverences, and infinite affections, should
actually have said, 'Yes, poor mortals, such of you
as have gone so far, shall be permitted to go
farther; hope, despair not.' "

112 LUTHER BURBANK

This dramatic soliloquy of Carlyle, written in his
seventy-fourth year, as he struggles with the problem
of life after death, appeals to me, I added, as an inci-
dent of the deepest significance. He, who denned life
as a "gleam between two eternities," finds himself
overcome by two conflicting feelings as he peers into
the future, mastered by the passions both of despair
and of hope. "Does not his yearning for the continu-
ance of those nobler qualities of the soul awaken a deep
sympathy within you?" I asked.

He replied that Carlyle breathed the spirit of a
philosopher as he stood, face to face, before the great-
est of all mysteries. He was prepared to go further,
and ground his belief on something stronger than senti-
ment. He thought Emerson was right when he said:

Here is this wonderful thought [of immor-
tality]. But whence came it? Who put it in the
mind? It was not I, it was not you; it is ele-
mental belongs to thought and virtue, and when-
ever we have either, we see the beams of this
light. When the Master of the universe has
points to carry in his government, he impresses
his will in the structure of minds. . . . Wherever
man ripens, this audacious belief appears. . . .
As soon as thought is exercised, this belief is in-
evitable; as soon as virtue glows, this belief con-
firms itself. It is a kind of summary or comple-
tion of man. . . . The doctrine is not sentimental,
but is grounded in the necessities and forces we
possess.

Such a belief is a supreme act based on the reason-

IMMORTALITY 113

ableness of God's work, he said. No philosophy, how-
ever keen; no science, however accurate, can solve a
problem infinitely beyond human experience. All-
powerful in the demonstration of facts, science is silent
as man seeks from such a source an answer to the
question of possible life beyond the grave. We need a
surer anchorage than feeling. There was a time in his
life when he felt the presence of departed friends and
heard their voices speaking to him out of the other
world. But that day passed out of his life like a spent
wave on the strand.

If the hope of immortality were blotted from the
lives of our fellow men, the consciousness of the eternal
blank that would ensue would be intolerable. No man
of his day in Europe was a more merciless critic of
structural religion than the French rationalist, Ernest
Renan. Strong are his words on the psychological
effect upon the world of a belief in an after life:

The day in which the belief in an after life shall
vanish from the earth will witness a terrific moral
and spiritual decadence. Some of us, perhaps,
might do without it, provided only that others
held it fast. But there is no lever capable of rais-
ing an entire people if once they have lost their
faith in the immortality of the soul.

Renan, in his judgment, was absolutely justified in
making that statement. And this fact makes it all
the more important to draw up such a conception of
the after life as accords with reason. No religion could
hope to win the world that eliminated the doctrine of
immortality from its teaching. It will find its true

114 LUTHER BURBANK

place in the Religion of Humanity. But it will differ
in its formulation from the dogmatic superstitions of
a theological system that have made a travesty of
heaven and an inhuman tragedy of hell. It is not so
much a question of continued existence as of the nature
of that existence. The grotesque conceptions of life
after death so jealously cultivated by the leaders of
structural Christianity are responsible for much of the
present indifference of the great mass of the people
toward the subject of personal immortality.

Referring to the nature of existence after death, the
gradual evolution of the belief in life after death from
the infancy of religions, he said, is clearly outlined in
the history of the Israelites. Up to the period of the
Babylonian captivity it is evident that the hereafter
had no place in their religious beliefs. During the
period of their captivity, however, in which for over
two centuries they were in close contact with the Per-
sian religion, they took over from that system belief in
one God, a heaven and a hell, the resurrection from the
dead and the final day of judgment. Then came the
crowning stage as contained in the tenets of the Chris-
tian faith. It is a history throughout of faith, and
faith alone, placed upon alleged fact, beyond the range
of human experience.

I submitted to Burbank my personal belief that
the integrity of the Christian religion is based on
the alleged fact of the resurrection of Jesus from
the dead. Thus Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians,
took the bold stand: "If Christ be not risen, then
is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.
Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God;

IMMORTALITY 115

because we have testified of God that He raised up
Christ: whom He raised not up, if so be that the
dead rise not." We know there are millions of men
and women in the world to-day living lives of conse-
crated service, with love toward God and their fellows,
to whom that belief of Paul is the supreme comfort
the mainstay of human life and purpose. And those
millions are but a small fraction of the countless mil-
lions in the procession of the centuries who have lived
and died with supreme faith in the gospel of the
resurrection. Whatever indifference may have gripped
the world in relation to that belief, men and women
cling to it when they face the great adventure. No
man is so brave that the message of the resurrection
does not fail to make him a little braver. This was
my experience as I ministered to our dying comrades
on French soil in the World War. Who can calculate
the stronger faith and calmer assurance that sustained
the hearts of those millions who heard the message of
their Master: "I am the resurrection, and the life:
he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet
shall he live; And whosoever liveth and believeth in
me shall never die" !

Burbank replied that this Christian conception of
immortality has put hope and joy in the hearts of
millions through the centuries, and therein we rejoice.
It is one of the many gates, wide open, through which
the souls of men pass into the life immortal. The
omnipresent God, Infinite Spirit behind man's destiny,
has many avenues of approach as hundreds of millions
seek the life after death. And it is here that the
Religion of Humanity will be a living force in the

116 LUTHER BURBANK

beliefs of men. It will teach the reality of spiritual
being and deny the doctrine of a bodily resurrection.
It will proclaim the truth of life after death, quite in-
dependent of the story of the risen Jesus. Apart alto-
gether from revelation, belief in immortality will be
taught as a sequence of evolution. Burbank shared
with Charles Darwin his conception of that life when he
said: "Believing as I do that man in the distant future
will be a far more perfect creature than he now is, it
is an intolerable thought that he and other sentient
beings are doomed to complete annihilation after such
a long-continued slow process." And he believed that
such a perfected creature will belong to the realm of
the spiritual. The Religion of Humanity will question
the position taken by Paul and others that, "since by
man came death, by man came also the resurrection of
the dead." There's no reason for bringing Adam into
the question of the immortal. To him, the life of Jesus
in his earthly ministry means more to the world than
the story of his resurrected life. No man ever lived
who taught the empire of the spiritual with such
supernal force, and demonstrated the truth that man
is in eternity, traveling across the face of time, with
more conclusiveness. He believed in, and lived by,
the reality of the "Eternal Now." The Religion of
Humanity will take from the page of revelation only
such statements on the doctrine of immortality as may
harmonize with modem scholarship and the truth of
science. "Out of death comes the view of the life
beyond the grave. . . . Though death be repugnant
to the flesh, just where the Spirit is given, to die is
gain. . . . What a wonderful transition it is!" With

IMMORTALITY 117

this sentiment, thus expressed by that great scientist,
Michael Faraday, he was in perfect accord.

IMMORTALITY AND REINCARNATION

In the long procession of distinguished scientists and
scholars from all parts of the world who traveled the
well-worn path to the door of Luther Burbank's cot-
tage were many Hindu leaders and disciples of the
Vedanta philosophy of India. So close was the bond
between their philosophy of life and that of Burbank
that a hospitable welcome always awaited them. His
nature quickly responded to their spiritual beliefs,
mystical conceptions and the independence that
marked their patient methods of research. He felt
at home with men in whom serenity of spirit and poise
of character were dominant traits. More than one
prominent Swami of Vedanta enjoyed the confidence
of his friendship, and frequent were the discussions
in which the doctrines of reincarnation and trans-
migration were treated from every angle. It may
safely be affirmed that the inspiring motive of his
desire to master the Vedantic theory of reincarnation
had no connection with a yearning after personal im-
mortality. His interest in this phase of religion, as
in the case of all other religious beliefs, was pursued
in a spirit in which the element of self was entirely
eliminated. His chief concern was to obtain, if pos-
sible, a reasonable answer to two questions which were
thrust in the foreground of his inquiry. He was deeply
interested in the claim that reincarnation was based on
evolution, and in the sequel to that claim that rein-
carnation was founded on the law of cause and effect.

118 LUTHER BURBANK

This prologue will help to clear the way for an intelli-
gent analysis of the statements that follow.

Once I called Burbank's attention to the fact that
his name had recently been linked with that of
Henry Ford in a published statement in which their
beliefs in the doctrine of reincarnation had been com-
pared. There were such radical differences between
the beliefs expressed in the reported interview with
him and the opinions so often advanced by him in my
presence that I was convinced he had been altogether
misinterpreted. He told me that the story of that
alleged interview with him, like so many others, had
been evolved from the riotous imagination of a young
reporter. If the statement of Mr. Ford's belief in the
doctrine of reincarnation was as inaccurate as that im-
puted to him a comparison is impossible. But why
compare? Henry Ford had long been his personal
friend, and he held in great esteem the stability and
sincerity of his character. For his genius, as one of
the world's greatest organizers, he had the most pro-
found respect. If it happened that he had been cor-
rectly reported, no man can find fault with him because
he expressed his personal belief in the doctrine of
reincarnation. It is at once his right and his privi-
lege. His own hesitation in affirming a belief in the
preexistence of the soul or in personal immortality
was the logical outcome of a life trained to slow meth-
ods in the field of science. If his life-work had placed
restraint upon his judgment in things mortal, how
much more in things immortal! We must never lose
sight of the distinction between opinion and convic-
tion, between the yearning and the belief of the soul.

IMMORTALITY 119

They play upon our lives, even the strongest of us, as
the clouds and sunshine play upon fields of corn.
Often had he seen life portrayed, he professed to me,
as did Walt Whitman in his Leaves of Grass, when
he said:

As to you, Life, I reckon you are the leavings of many

deaths ;
No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before.

Who has not felt, he asked, like Emerson when he
said: "We wake and find ourselves on a stair. There
are stairs below us which we seem to have ascended;
there are stairs above us, many a one, which go upward
and out of sight"? Nor does one of the greatest of
our scientists hesitate to express a favorable opinion
on the tenableness of the theory of reincarnation, for
it was Darwin himself who said: "None but hasty
thinkers will reject it on the ground of inherent absurd-
ity. Like the doctrine of evolution itself, that of
transmigration has its roots in the world of reality."
If he were called upon to choose between the theory
of a miraculous resurrection, as contained in the gospel
story, and the doctrine of reincarnation, which has its
roots in the ages long before the founding of Chris-
tianity, as a scientist his choice would rest in a doc-
trine that included the pre-existence of the soul. He
denied the proposition subscribed to by some theo-
logians "that the spiritual nature has been superadded
to the animal nature by some extracosmic spiritual
agency." His own position would be based on the
conclusion of that eminent English scientist, J. Arthur
Thomson, even though he might find that it put him

120 LUTHER BURBANK

at variance with the evolutionists: "The world is one,
not twofold, the spiritual influx is the primal reality,
and there is nothing in the end which was not also in
the beginning." But his choice rested not between the
theory of a miraculous resurrection and the doctrine of
reincarnation. His belief in immortality had no place
for the continued life of the individual, for personality
in his view is absorbed in the

UNIVERSAL LIFE

He believed that the soul is a part of God and that,
consciously or unconsciously, it will endure as long as
God lasts. In closing his "Challenge to Thought" he
gave expression to his faith in the noble language of
Olive Schreiner: .

For the little soul that cries aloud for con-
tinued personal existence for itself and its beloved,
there is no help. For the soul which knows itself
no more as a unit, but as a part of the Universal
Unity of which the beloved also is a part, which
feels within itself the throb of the Universal Life
for that soul there is no death.

Such an inspiring sentiment, he added, is worthy of
being carved in bold letters over the door of every
temple in which the Religion of Humanity is taught to
seekers after truth.

And its meaning has been simplified in poetic form,
for George Eliot has most beautifully expressed the
idea of immortality which consists in a growing,
spreading, deepening love of humankind. An immor-
tality not of the individual, not of the person, but of

IMMORTALITY 121

the quality; an immortality of being. Our lives are
not separate lives, but organic lives. Society is one;
the race is one; we inherit all that has gone before;
we add our contribution to all that is passing and
comes after; every deed of ours mingles with the great
current of human life; every thought, every purpose
adds its part in making the future what it is to be.
So we live on in the life of the world we inhabit.

He believed that this is the faith of many earnest
souls who live what seem to others dreary and toil-
some lives, but are cheered by the hope that what they
do with all their might, and as well as they can, is
their honest contribution to the future and their im-
mortal career.

Such faith is a rebuke to that sordid craving for an
immortality of gratification of individual desires and
purely selfish aims.

Thus, in that noble utterance of George Eliot, did
he find the deepest yearning of his soul expressed:

Oh may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence: live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
For miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge man's search to vaster
issues.

So to live is heaven:
To make undying music in the world,
Breathing a beauteous order that controls
With growing sway the growing life of man.
So we inherit that sweet purity

122 LUTHER BURBANK

For which we struggled, failed, and agonized
With widening retrospect that bred despair.

Rebellious flesh that would not be subdued,
A vicious parent shaming still its child
Poor anxious penitence, is quick dissolved;
Its discords, quenched by meeting harmonies,
Die in the large and charitable air.

And all the rarer, better, truer self,
That sobbed religiously in yearning song,
That watched to ease the burden of the world,
Laboriously tracing what must be,
And what may yet be better saw within
A worthier image for the sanctuary,
And shaped it forth before the multitude
Divinely human, raising worship so
To higher reverence more mixed with love
That better self shall live till human time
Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky
Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb
Unread for ever.,

This is life to come,

Which martyred men have made more glorious

For us who strive to follow. May I reach

That purest heaven, be to other souls

The cup of strength in some great agony,

Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love,

Beget the smiles that have no cruelty

Be the sweet presence of a good diffused,

And in diffusion ever more intense.

So shall I join the choir invisible

Whose music is the gladness of the world.

SUMMARY

Little did I dream on that day when our final con-
versation took place that the spirit of my beloved
friend Luther Burbank was so soon to "join the choir
invisible." Our theme was "immortality," and the
name of George Eliot, as we analyzed her faith and
quest of the unseen, was frequently on our lips. Be-
tween those two earnest seekers after truth there was

a likeness in harmony of thought and honesty of pur-
pose that profoundly impressed me. Her faith found
its absolute response in him, having its source in what
both loved to call the "Kingdom within." Love and
fruitage formed the final test, and the supreme desire
was to lose one's soul in the good of others. He could
well say with her:

So to live is heaven:
To make undying music in the world,
Breathing a beauteous order that controls
With growing sway the growing life of man.

For some days before he was stricken there were
signs of a growing weariness a desire for rest unusual
to him. It was most apparent after he had made him-
self familiar with the great mass of letters received by
him from all parts of the world. For a time he had
been buoyed up by the excitement, but now a reaction
had set in, indicating extreme exhaustion. The fact
was, his sensitive soul received great shocks in this

123

124 LUTHER BURBANK

course of studying with the utmost care letters con-
ceived in narrow bigotry or rife with human distress.
The silent messenger was even then on his way from
the other shore to bear his spirit thence.

Shortly before the dawn of Sunday morn, April 11,
his spirit passed on, and for him the riddle of the uni-
verse was solved.

Luther Burbank seemed to have reached the acme of
his powers in the months that immediately preceded
the unfortunate exploitation of his religious beliefs.
In the late autumn of 1925 we were together when a
letter arrived from Mr. Edison, full of exultant joy in
his conscious capacity for almost unlimited work. It
seemed to delight Luther Burbank to the soul, and he
read it aloud with an expression of glee. That after-
noon he rolled over on his lawn, rising to his feet with
lightning speed, as if to demonstrate his own agility
as well as exuberance. Few men of his years could
then have matched his physical, mental and spiritual
powers. His untiring energy for one rather frail of
body was remarkable. Life appealed to him as one
long glorious Spring. His mind was planning to
mature his greatest creations in plant life in the period
that would mark the completion of his four score
years. His face was radiant with the joy that over-
flowed his spiritual being during our many talks to-
gether those days on the religious life. It seemed to
me as if his spirit echoed the voice of old: "If I take
the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost
parts of the sea, even there shall thy hand lead me, and
thy right hand hold me."

If I were asked to name his one outstanding qual-

SUMMARY 125

ity, in my judgment, as the result of long and deep
friendship, I should answer that it revealed itself in his
one supreme desire to preserve the integrity both of
mind and conscience. He was the honestest thinker
with whom I ever rubbed minds. His habit of accu-
rate thought in the realm of science was brought into
active play in the realm of spirit. This explains his
matter-of-fact revolt against superstitious dogmatism,
his absolute indifference to popular opinion, his eager-
ness to welcome newly discovered truth even at the
cost of cherished beliefs.

If I were asked to name a quality that was a close
second I should answer his emotional health, strong
and abiding. That quality, which enabled him to
triumph over fatigue and depression, softened his
judgments and imparted a beautiful tenderness to his
spirit that left its mark in kind upon all who came
within the radius of his personality. He had a heart
that went out in great love to all humanity. This
permanent inward glow helps to account for that
almost hypnotic influence felt in his presence by those
who were honored with his friendship. These qualities
of mind and heart in harmonious combination form the
cornerstone of the structure of his character and be-
liefs.

Luther Burbank perceived in all men the unborn
possibilities of the good life, even though surface indi-
cations reported them to be as hard as flint or as unre-
sponsive as stone. So great was his spirit of compas-
sion that, in the days of his greatest strength, many a
soul sought his help, and moral and physical wrecks
regained their grip through his healing power.

126 LUTHER BURBANK

To him life the more abundant life was ever
supreme. He sought that life by fifty years of patient
care for the plant of the field and the human plant
that he called himself and felt to be molded by the
same almighty Force. It can be readily understood
that a man of such mold of mind and heart fretted at
doctrinal definitions. Theological terms encasing dead
beliefs suggested to his mind the decayed wrappings
that bind the bodies of Egyptian mummies. Yet there
was a sweet reasonableness about his attitude. He was
peculiarly free from the too frequent error of mod-
ernists who, in assailing the dogmatism of funda-
mentalists, are not one whit less dogmatic themselves.
"What is there to be said on the other side?" was a
favorite expression of his, indicating an open mind.

Luther Burbank was at heart a poet, one of Nature's
best, for his soul was steeped in the beautiful even
though he lacked facility in the power of poetic ex-
pression. He was an idealist, with a warmth of pas-
sion for his fellow man that flowered in acts of love
and fellowship. It is told of St. Francis of Assisi by
his biographer, Ozanam, that

He loved rocks and forests and harvests, the
beauty of the fields, the freshness of fountains, the
verdant gardens, the earth, the fire, the sea and
winds and spoke to them as living creatures, ex-
horting them to remain pure, and to honor and
serve God. The birds and beasts and flowers he
spoke of as his brethren and sisters and many
sweet stories are told of his compassion to the
sufferings of animals how hunted creatures, the

SUMMARY 127

pheasants and the hares, ran to him for protection,
and hid themselves in the folds of his habit.

How near unto this universal love of nature, of
animal life, of mankind was the saintly Luther Bur-
bank. His were like simple affections, broad and deep
as the universe. In the circle of his closest friends
where he cast off all reserve, his sayings had all the
charm of the spontaneous, in motion, warmth and
color. He was most at home in his garden, drinking
in the fragrance of dahlias and chrysanthemums, and
skipping with joyousness of being like a youth through
its narrow trails.

His face was a benediction. There was a delicacy
to his features of unusual charm, and his constant
smile fascinated all who came into his presence. It
was radiant with the glow of the qualities of love,
kindness, gentleness and repose. Yet there was an
added something to his expression suggesting great
force of character a quickness of decision and action
that belong to greatness.

Between his own simple life and the sweet, trustful
intuitive life that children lead there was a mutual
bond, surpassing beautiful. It was all everything
taken for granted between them. In his walks, little
children would rush toward him with outstretched
arms, and pour out the secrets and affections of their
hearts, happy and confident in his trustful love.

Religion was the great reality of his being. There
did he find the substance, not only of things hoped for,
but of things that make beautiful the life that now is.
Like many other strong men in the world of science,

128 LUTHER BURBANK

he shrank from the play of words to demonstrate
God, His nature and His attributes as vain. Religion
was not that at all, but life finite seeking from life
infinite its greatest treasures.

His one dream was of a Religion of Humanity that
would appeal to the mass of mankind. A religion,
that is, in which religious truth in the large would be
disentangled from the meshes of superstition and a
unity of belief made possible.

And his supreme aim was to express that religion
himself in terms of life. His interests centered in life,
the larger, richer life. It seems to me the interpreta-
tion of Professor Leuba might be accepted as his con-
ception of that life, when he stated:

God is not known, He is understood, He is used.
If He proves himself useful the religious con-
sciousness asks for no more than that. Does God
really exist? How does he exist? What is he?
are so many irrelevant questions. Not God, but
life, more life, a larger, richer, more satisfying
life is, in the last analysis, the end of religion.
The love of life, at any and every level of develop-
ment, is the religious impulse.

Speaking out of an experience of more than forty
years in the active ministry, and of a wide and intimate
acquaintance with men outside of these professional
contacts, Luther Burbank impressed me as the purest,
gentlest, kindest, most religious soul that ever entered
my life.

Truly, the walks we took in spirit in the many weeks
spent by me in his home through the rich pastures

SUMMARY 129

of religious thought, plucking the sustenance planted
by the hand of God by the way, were to me the
most fruitful hours ever spent in the realm of the
spiritual.

For fifty years and over he worked with Nature
as an accomplice. As he said : "What a joy life is when
you have made a close working partnership with
Nature, helping her to produce for the benefit of man-
kind new forms, colors and perfumes in flowers which
were never known before; fruits in form, size, color
and flavor never before seen on this globe, and grains
of enormously increased productiveness." The world
has generously acknowledged the thoroughness of his
success in that work.

For fifty years and over he worked with God in his
garden and in the garden of his soul. Out of the
communings of his being, the philosophy of his daily
life, the fruitage of his religious experience, he now
gives expression to his idea of a RELIGION OF HUMAN-
ITY. The world will be no less generous in acknowl-
edging the sincerity that gives it inspiration and the
possible success that may attend it.

No summary of his life would be complete without
a tribute to the marvelous devotion of his wife, Eliza-
beth Burbank, whose tenderness and love sustained
him through years of his struggle and triumph in the
pursuit of science.

If Luther Burbank's spirit has passed, by the process
of reincarnation, into the souls of his fellows, God
must have chosen the noblest of his children for its
abode.

If his spirit has been merged in the eternal con-

130 LUTHER BURBANK

sciousness of God, it has surely found a fitting resting
place.

If } in the language of evangelical faith, he has been
called, as the child of God, into the abiding presence
of his eternal Father, the radiancy of his personality
will find it to be an environment intensely absorbing.

But who can tell?

Were the aggregate of the world's knowledge in the
fields of science concentrated in a single mind, that
mind would utterly fail if it tried to demonstrate the
nature of man's destiny, to cast even a single ray of
light on its inscrutable mystery. Science is "human
experience tested and set in order." Immortality is
as far removed from experience as the finite is from
the infinite. The souls of men look in vain to that
source, therefore, for an answer to the question: "If
a man die, shall 'he live again?"

Nor is the search any more rewarding to those who*
seek the answer through philosophy. The Ingersoll
Lectures of Harvard University on the subject of
immortality are of chief importance in demonstrating
the utter failure of all speculative attempts to solve
the mystery. As Sir William Osier, an Ingersoll lec-
turer, confessed:

On the question before us [immortality], wide
and far your hearts will range from those early
days when matins and evensong, evensong and
matins, sang the larger hope of humanity into
your souls. . . . You will wander through all its
phases, to come at last, I trust, to the opinion of
Cicero, who had rather be mistaken with Plato

SUMMARY 131

than be in the right with those who deny alto-
gether the life after death; and this is my own
confessio fidei.

Thus far, that is the limit to philosophy's advance
through the ages!

In his Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman did not fail
to make his confession, as the echo of naturalism:

to confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents,

rebuffs, as the trees and animals do ...
Dear Camerado ! I confess I have urged you onward with

me and still urge you, without the least idea what

is our destination,
Or whether we shall be victorious, or utterly quell'd and

defeated.

In the last analysis, our only hope rests in the
"supreme act of faith in the reasonableness of God's
work." So Tennyson felt when he sang:

Strong Son of God, Immortal Love,
Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
By faith and faith alone embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove.

Thine are those orbs of light and shade;
Thou madest life in man and brute;
Thou madest death ; and lo, thy foot
Is on the skull which thou hast made.

Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:
Thou madest man, he knows not why;
He thinks he was not made to die:
And thou hast made him: Thou art just.

SAYINGS OF LUTHER BURBANK

One day I said to Luther Burbank, "Won't you
gather together, dear friend, a number of your terse
sayings that I may use them in my book? Many of
them have helped me."

He handed me the following:

1. Truth shall make you free, not leave you in the
bondage of superstition and fear.

2. In order to excite veneration things must be
hoary with age.

3. We are the latest product of those who have
passed before.

4. If we cannot think and see clearer than those
who lived in medieval times, then even what we call
our Christian civilization has been an utter failure.

5. Those who have made and are making history
are not chained to the dead past; they are looking
forward to the better understanding of the universe
and our own place in Nature. Those objects can never
be obtained by spending time turning backward to
look at our old tracks. We are creatures, not "worms
of the dust."

6. Scientists gladly accept any new truth which can
be demonstrated by experiment, that is, proved by the
very law of the cosmos. Not so with any new concep-
tions of religion; these are fought by the use of per-
secution and venom. Many of the current religious

132

SAYINGS OF LUTHER BURBANK 133

beliefs literally carried into practice would stampede
humanity into the old jungle ideas and habits.

7. Ignorance of the truth is the only pardonable
sin ; it inevitably lands its dupes in fear and supersti-
tion mainly because it is too hard to think. It is so
much easier to be a mental parasite, allowing others to
feed us, thus being led astray by designing deceivers
or self-deceivers, who may be as blind to truth as are
their dupes.

8. Christianity itself was a rebellion from the
shackles of the past. The road to human progress
since then is lined with the graves of martyrs. But
the clear, white light of science has extinguished the
fagots of bigotry wherever it has gone. With most
intelligent people the fear of a future hell and the
devil has passed into oblivion; they do not exist for
most of us.

9. In the minds of those who do not indulge in the
luxury of thinking, prejudice, not open-mindedness, is
still dominant.

10. The art of getting things done is mostly a mat-
ter of concentration and the rapid elimination of non-
essentials.

11. A dogmatic system is the result of a perverted
moral judgment under which the pursuit of truth is
impossible.

12. The integrity of one's own mind is of infinitely
more value than adherence to any creed or system.

13. We must choose between a dead faith belonging
to the past and a living, growing, ever-advancing sci-
ence belonging to the future.

14. An honest search for truth gives suppleness for

134 LUTHER BURBANK

harmonious adaptation to an ever-changing environ-
ment. Orthodoxy is anchylosis nobody at home; ring
up the undertaker for further information.

15. Yes! It is too true all men have not arrived
from Monkeydom; they were consigned as freight and
will be found sidetracked at some way-station.

16. All human societies, clubs, churches and schools
have their life cycles; vibrant youth is their best sea-
son of usefulness; then they begin to crystallize into
more or less useless forms.

17. The knowledge and ability to perform useful,
honest labor of any kind is of infinitely more impor-
tance and value than all the so-called culture of the
schools.

18. Any form of education which leaves one less
able to meet everyday emergencies and occurrences is
unbalanced and vicious and will lead any people to
destruction.

19. "Knowledge is power," but it requires to be
combined with wisdom to become useful.

20. We must learn that any person who will not
accept what he knows to be truth, for the very love
of truth alone, is very definitely undermining his men-
tal integrity and destroying his moral fiber.

21. We are now standing upon the threshold of new
methods and new discoveries which shall give us
imperial dominion in days to come.

22. Growth is a vital process an evolution a mar-
'shaling of vagrant, unorganized forces into definite

forms of beauty, harmony and utility.

23. Repetition is the best means of impressing any
one point on the human understanding; it is also the

SAYINGS OF LUTHER BURBANK 135

means which we employ to train animals to do what
we wish. And by just the same process we impress
plant life.

24. Thrice happy is the man whose youthful pas-
sions and appetites have not destroyed his ability at
fifty to step lightly, think clearly and love truly.

25. Long life waits on those who practice a daily
discriminating temperance in all things.

26. Man has by no means reached the ultimate.
The fittest has not yet arrived.

27. Growth in its most simple or most marvelously
complicated forms is the architect of beauty, the inspi-
ration of poetry, the builder and sustain er of life; for
life itself is only growth, an ever-changing movement
toward some object or ideal. Wherever life is found,
there also is growth in some direction. The end of
growth is the beginning of decay. Growth within is
health, content and happiness; and growing things
stimulate and enhance growth within.

28. Can we hope for normal, healthy, happy chil-
dren if they are constantly in an ugly environment?
Are we not reasonably sure that these unpropitious
conditions will almost swamp a well-balanced normal
heredity and utterly overthrow and destroy a weak
though otherwise good one? We are learning that
child life is far more sensitive to impressions of all
kinds than we had ever before realized.

29. We are a garrulous people and too often for-
get or do not know that the heart as well as the
head should receive its full share of culture.

30. A well-balanced character should always be the
object and aim of all education,

136 LUTHER BURBANK

v'

31. A perfect system of education can never be
attained, because education is preparing one for the
specific environment expected, while conditions change
with time and place. There is too much striving to
be consistent rather than to be right.

32. Every great man is at heart a poet, and all must
listen long to the harmonies of Nature before they can
make successful translations from her infinite resources,
through their own ideals, into creations of beauty in
words, forms, colors or sounds.

33. Religion rejoices in the happiness of others and
helps to make them happy.

34. Science has shown us all we know about what
we call God. There is no other real knowledge besides
all else is theorizing without a shadow of proof for
those who think.

35. The rich blessings of freedom come only to
those who seek the truth for truth's sake alone. "The
truth shall make you free."

36. "Prove all things; hold fast to that which is
good"; and good things are the true things, not the
untrue ones.

37. The astronomer, the artist, the chemist, the
laborer, the mechanic, the biologist, the electrician and
the physicists of every name are exemplifications of
earnest, faithful, persistent effort in revealing frag-
ments of its origin and destiny to humanity.

38. Prayer may be elevating if combined with
works, and they who labor with their hands or feet
have faith and are generally quite sure to receive an
immediate and favorable, response.

SAYINGS OF LUTHER BURBANK 137

39. Begging is the prerogative of tramps, not of
men born, as it is said, to "rule over all the earth."

40. Belittling the life we have here is blasphemy;
you can do nothing be nothing as long as you blas-
pheme in this foolish way. Look within, not without,
for strength.

41. Thinking and talking and reading of sin, death
and the devil will certainly, by the very law of the
universe, bring to you your full share of them.

42. Science, which is only another name for truth,
now holds religious charlatans, self-deceivers and God-
agents in a certain degree of check agents and
employees, I mean, of a mythical, medieval man-made
God, anthropomorphic in constitution.

43. Look for and cultivate the good within your-
self, your friends and neighbors; in animals, birds,
trees, flowers, fields, rivers, mountains; and in stars
which are not holes in the firmament but the light
of other cosmic worlds.

44. The word "religion" has acquired a very bad
name among those who really love truth, justice,
charity. It also exhales the musty odor of sancti-
mony and falsehood.

45. Church sounds and smells are not as pleasing
to many as those of the open, sunny fields of flowers.

46. We are all great travelers, even when we stay
at home. We all travel around this little globe 24,000
miles every day, or at the rate of 1,000 miles an hour;
and around our central giver of light and life in another
direction at the same time at a much more fearful
speed; and we travel constantly in a third direction

138 LUTHER BURBANK

still at one and the same time. We are now 400 miles
at least from the point in space at which I commenced
speaking to you.

47. It does no good to deceive yourself with outside
false promises; look within for light, peace and
strength and do not, like cowards, call on others for
help.

48. Cold mathematical intellect unaccompanied by
a heart for the philosophic, idealistic, and poetic side
of Nature is like a locomotive well made but of no
practical value because without fire and steam ; a good
knowledge of language, history, geography, mathe-
matics, chemistry, botany, astronomy, geology, etc., is
of some importance, but far more so is the knowledge
that all true success in life depends on integrity; the
knowledge that health, peace, happiness, and content
all come with heartily accepting and daily living by
the "Golden Rule" ; the knowledge that dollars, though
of great importance and value, do not necessarily make
one wealthy. A loving devotion to truth is an indica-
tion of normal physical and mental health. Hypocrisy
and deceit are only forms of debility, mental imbecility
and bodily disease.

49. A fragrant beehive or a plump, healthy hornets'
nest in good running order often becomes an object
lesson of some importance.

50. The fundamental principles of education should
be the subject of earnest scientific investigation, but
this investigation should be broad, including not only
the theatrical, wordy, memorizing, compiling methods,
but all the causes also which tend to produce men and
women with sane, well-balanced characters.

SAYINGS OF LUTHER BURBANK 139

51. The man or the woman who moves the earth,
who is the master rather than the victim of fate, has
strong feelings well in hand a vigilant engineer at
the throttle.

52. We should learn that it is not necessary to be
selfish in order to succeed. If you happen to get a
new idea, don't build a barbed wire fence around it
and label it yours. By giving your best thoughts freely
others will come to you so freely that you will soon
never think of fencing them in. Thoughts refuse to
climb barbed wire fences to reach anybody.

53. By placing ourselves in harmony and coopera-
tion with the main high potential line of human prog-
ress and welfare, we pick up and receive the benefit
of strong magnetic induction currents.

54. Straightforward honesty always pays better div-
idends than zigzag policy. It gives one individuality,
self-respect and power to take the initiative, saving
all the trouble of constant tacking to catch the popular
breeze. Each human being is endowed, like a steam-
ship, with a tremendous power. The fires of life
develop a pressure of steam which, when well disci-
plined, leads to happiness for ourselves and others;
when let run wild it may lead only to pain and destruc-
tion.

55. Education of rules and words only for polish
and public opinion is of the past. The education of
the present and future is to guide these human ener-
gies of ours through wind and wave straight to the
port desired. Education gives no one any new force.
It can only discipline Nature's energies in natural and
useful directions so that the voyage of life may be

140 LUTHER BURBANK

a useful and happy one so that life may not be
blasted or completely cut off before thought and
experience have ripened into useful fruit.

56. When the love of truth for truth's sake this
poetic idealism, this intuitive perception, this growth
from within has been awakened and cultivated,
thoughts live and are transmitted into endless forms
of beauty and utility. We must cultivate a sturdy
self-respect; we must break away from the mere pet-
rified word-pictures of others and cultivate the "still
small voice" within.

57. This intuitive consciousness, in union with
extensive practical knowledge and "horse sense," has
always been the motive power residing in those wtio
have for all time left the human race rich with legacies
of useful thought, with ripening harvests of freedom
and with ever-increasing stores of wisdom and happi-
ness.

EPILOGUE

In view of the sudden death of Luther Burbank,
not long after the conversations with his friend
recorded in this volume, I am asked to give a brief
account of my own personal relations with him.

My knowledge of Burbank goes back more than
thirty years. He had then a growing reputation as
a plant breeder and lover of flowers and fruits, skilled
in the finest of all fine arts, the creation of new forms,
beautiful or useful, through the processes of crossing,
selection and segregation. Equally conspicuous was
his destruction, at the end of a season, of thousands
of plants likely to fall short of his expectations. For,
while at times the crossing of unlike forms brings out
in the progeny the finest qualities of both parents,
and of earlier ancestors as well, far more- often it fails
to do so, because, in the mass, "commonness prevails."
By choosing the most promising of seedlings, however,
and segregating these that is, shutting them off from
breeding with the mass their desirable traits may
be more or less definitely fixed, and a new variety or
race comes into being.

One quality which distinguished Burbank from
other plant breeders was that he could forecast almost
instinctively the future of even a tiny seedling. Cer-
tain features of foliage or growth mark feeble or worth-

141

142 LUTHER BURBANK

less little plants, or indicate strong ones. Further, in
some cases apples and plums, for example years
may be saved if, instead of waiting for the little plant
to mature and show its value, it is grafted on the limb
of a grown tree, and thus led to produce fruit in a
very short time. Many young shoots, moreover, can
thus be tried out on the same tree. Indeed, Burbank
once sent me seventy-five kinds of apples produced
from seedling grafts tested on a single tree. As no
two seedlings are likely to have had exactly the same
ancestry, each one develops as a new kind more or less
different from the known female or the unknown male
from which it sprang. Of all the seventy-five sorts
of apple just mentioned, only one had special value
and that of no economic importance, it being sweet
and ripening in October.

Burbank's reputation for fine and accurate work
attracted the notice of the distinguished botanist of
the University of Amsterdam, Dr. Hugo de Vries, who
crossed the ocean and the continent about 1904, chiefly
(he said) to make Burbank's personal acquaintance
and visit his gardens at Santa Rosa and the neighbor-
ing village of Sebastopol. After hearing the enthusias-
tic and sympathetic report of Dr. de Vries, Dr. Vernon
Kellogg, my Stanford colleague, and I were much
impressed, and together spent some days at Santa
Rosa. The results of our observations were published
separately in The Popular Science Monthly for Jan-
uary, 1905, and October, 1906. These two articles
were later (1908) printed together as a book entitled
The Scientific Aspects of Luther Burbank's Work.
Soon afterward the Carnegie Endowment became

EPILOGUE 143

interested and for a time made generous contribution
to the scientific research which the work involved.

I need not go further into the scientific attainments
of this nobly unique man, except to refer to his inti-
mate friendship with many biologists of the first rank
and to deprecate the popular notion of him as a "wiz-
ard" who brought about startling results by weird and
inscrutable ways. For his methods are perfectly open
and known to all who are seriously interested. His
superiority lay in his keen intelligence, his mastery
of Darwinian theory, and especially, and perhaps
equally, in his exquisite manipulation.

His fineness of temper and his unequaled skill in
discrimination, however, showed itself in very different
fields from that of botany. His attitude toward
humanity, and toward religion, rested on the same rare
and noble qualities. He could not imagine a God more
cruel or less just than the best men and women whom
he knew. He had no interest in medieval creeds nor
in any form of belief which denied the inherent nobil-
ity of human nature. The phases of outworn ortho-
doxy which rested on the dogma of eternal punish-
ment and total depravity were to him most repellent.
His own religion, intense in its way, overflowed in
sympathy and helpfulness. He would "go about
doing good" in such ways as he found possible. At
one time he declared himself an "infidel," a term of
reproach which throughout the ages has been applied
to "men that stood alone, unconvinced by ax or gib-
bet," nor by any kind of majority vote. The word
"infidel" is Latin for "unfaithful," a term no one but
himself ever dared apply to Burbank. His religious

144 LUTHER BURBANK

thoughts, like his plant experiments, were character-
ized by an exquisite precision and delicacy which those
who run in droves could not understand.

DAVID STARR JORDAN

Stanford University
August 10, 1926

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